Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [64]
So what happened? He took the field, had no problems, and started to feel okay again (or continued to feel okay?).
All of the pieces were beginning to fit into place, and I was increasingly confident we were going to Athens this year. In other words: zeru tituli, my ass.
CHAPTER 25
The Perfect Match, Played the Night Before
In the winter of 2007, Greece was already in our sights. The important thing was to know how to wait, and while we were biding our time, Milan bought Ronaldo from Real Madrid during the January transfer market. We were suspended midway between mythology and the history of art. The Phenomenon is a remarkable young man—an open, generous, sensitive, humble, shy person. He’s the opposite of what everyone thinks of him. The only thing is, there was nothing driving him to train and exercise to attain the maximum he could achieve. And that really pissed me off. I had never had a striker of his quality; Ronie was, and remains, unrivaled in his field—the invention of a superior mind.
When he got to Milanello, he was a little overweight and, as a result—at least in the early period—he worked very hard. He wanted to lose weight, even though we already had some problems persuading him to work with a certain degree of continuity. He was remarkably gifted—unlike anyone else—and he thought that was enough to turn him into the Ronaldo of the old days. He was as wrong as he could be. We needed him for the championship season. I used to tell him that, and he would listen to me, but not that carefully. We considered his arrival to be a huge gamble; at first, he believed in it along with us, when we were all still rowing in the same direction. Then he seemed to give up; just as he started scoring goals, he got lazy, and, from that point forward, we all lost our bets. Him first, followed by A. C. Milan.
Ronie just rested on his laurels. It was a real pity, because he still had enormous potential. I was positive that he could become the greatest footballer on earth; he had everything he needed to do it, except for one thing: the sheer will. At first, we got along like a house on fire, but once he started to show his indifference I got tired of pushing him. There was no point in getting angry, so I thought: “Okay, we’ll work on it next summer.” It proved impossible: an injury intervened. First one, then another, and then another still, until he had the operation in Paris. If he’d only worked just a little harder …
And I have to say that, in the locker room, everybody was happy to see him. I’ve heard people say that at A. C. Milan we take surveys of the more experienced veteran players before completing the acquisition of a major player. That’s not exactly accurate, but it’s not that far from the real situation, either. When a player of a certain importance is about to join the team, we listen to the impressions of his future teammates, but we don’t ask for their opinions. The players don’t have a veto, but they can voice their concerns. For example, Christian Poulsen, long before joining Juventus, had a physical examination with us. He wasn’t too popular in the locker room, but that’s not why we decided not to take him in the end. He had a problem with his ankle, and the doctors said no. It was a different matter with Antonio Cassano: he would not have been likely to fit in with our group.
Together with Ronaldo, that January transfer window brought us Massimo Oddo from Lazio, the right fullback who could make Cafu huff and puff—another brick in the road that was leading to the final game in Athens. By now it was an obsession; I thought about it all the time, with one eye on Liverpool and the other on A. C. Milan—half my mind on the Italian championship and the other on the Champions League. In the first round, we struggled against Celtic. In the quarterfinals, we played Bayern Munich; we finished 2–2 at home, to the great concern and frenzy of one and all, while Galliani was busy unscrewing the last bolt holding my bench in place. He had almost finished the job. In fact, when