Carlo Ancelotti can strengthen his claim to be the greatest manager in football history by leading Brazil to World Cup glory next summer.
The Italian coach has practically completed the club game, having won a record five Champions League titles with Real Madrid and AC Milan. He’s also the only manager in history to have won titles in each of Europe’s five major leagues – the Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga and La Liga.
Next up, Ancelotti will attempt to reach the zenith of the international game and end Brazil’s 24-year wait to get their hands on the most prestigious trophy in football.
Here are the only two managers who have won both the Champions League (or old European Cup) and the World Cup.
Marcello Lippi
In 1996, Lippi watched on from the Stadio Olimpico touchline as his Juventus side beat Louis van Gaal’s Ajax in a penalty shootout.
All four of his players converted their spot-kicks, the Old Lady showing their mettle to make it over the line and get it won – something they’ve failed to do in five successive final appearances since then.
Ten years later he did the same as the Azzurri took on Les Bleus on the biggest stage of all at Berlin’s Olympiastadion. Another 1-1 draw after 120 absorbing minutes and another occasion in which his lieutenants successfully tucked away their pens.
“There’s no right or wrong way to start out as a coach, but it is important to have the ability to work with players,” wrote Claudio Ranieri of his old pal Lippi in The Observer ahead of the 2006 World Cup final.
“You need to manage them, in all senses of the word, and to motivate them. But above all you need to know your football, how to read the game and change things during a match.
“Lippi does all this. As well as being superb at communicating with his players, he is a great motivator. He knows he can’t be a friend to them, can’t be too close, but also that he must not be too distant. He needs to give the right sort of understanding and feeling to his team.”
Remind you of anyone else? Ranieri could just as easily be talking about another of his compatriots, Ancelotti.
Being a brilliant man-manager as well as an adept in-game tactician is a perfect recipe for tournament football.
Vicente del Bosque
A defensive midfielder in his playing days, Del Bosque won five league titles and four Copa del Rey with Real Madrid in the 1970s and early 1980s.
He later served as a youth coach, interim and caretaker before finally landing the big gig on a permanent basis in 1999.
The year before, Jupp Heynckes had led the club to their sixth European Cup – and first in 32 years – but left only a few days later after domestic underperformance and a spectacular falling out with the board.
Inheriting a squad of winners, the mild-mannered Del Bosque kept that spirit going by delivering the Champions League trophy in 2000 and 2002, making it three in five years for Los Blancos around the turn of the century.
That pedigree made him the perfect candidate to take on Spain’s Euro 2008 champions following the departure of Luis Aragones.
Sure enough, just as he’d done at the highest level of the club game, Del Bosque guided La Roja to World Cup glory in South Africa.
“I told them that this was the game of our lives,” Del Bosque reminisced in an interview with FourFourTwo.
“We were football romantics, and I knew we were going to have the opportunity to experience a beautiful night, unique for many people. I told them that it was not a war, but a sport, and that we could win or lose.”
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