After months of push and pull, the wedding will finally take place between Carlo Ancelotti and the Brazilian national football team. The divorce of the Emilian coach from Real Madrid had been in the air for weeks after the disappointing season (no Champions League and also the Liga and Copa del Rey slipped away in favor of rivals Barça), despite a contract until 2026 and a Club World Cup still to be played in June, but it seemed that Carletto was about to accept a huge offer of 50 million euros per season from Saudi Arabia. Instead, according to the Brazilian press, he will have to "settle" for about 60 million reais per year, or approximately 10 million, not much less than what he earned at Real Madrid, that is 11 million euros net per year. The agreement with the CBF, the Brazilian Federation, is of only one year, until the end of the 2026 World Cup, but will probably be renewed if things go well. According to Brazilian newspapers, Ancelotti will also be entitled to a prize of almost 1 million euros if he will lead the Seleçao to win the coveted Cup, which has been missing since 2002.
At the moment neither Real Madrid nor the interested party have confirmed, but it is likely that the coach will do so today in the press conference to present the midweek round of the championship against Mallorca, while it seems that the blancos have already identified the replacement in the former midfielder. Xabi Alonso, German champion last year at the helm of Bayer Leverkusen.
Ancelotti: the highest paid coach in the history of Brazil
Ancelotti is about to become by far the highest paid coach in the history of the Seleçao (he will earn double that of Tite, the coach of the disastrous expedition in Qatar) and he will also be the first foreign technician to lead the national team in an important competition like the World Cup.
Expectations are very high: the echo of the triumphs of the former coach of Juventus and Milan he has also arrived in South America, where Carletto is held in high regard. “The Brazilian Seleçao, the most successful in the history of world football, will be coached by the best coach in the world,” the president of the CBF went so far as to say Edna Rodrigues in a video in which he made official the arrival of the Italian coach. For Rodrigues it is a very important operation not only to relaunch the ambitions of a National team in full crisis of play and results, but above all to restore credibility and confidence to the entire movement and its highly contested management.
Brazil and the Neymar family
The president is in fact in the eye of the storm, heavily criticized by the press and public opinion for not having gotten anything right for a long time. In particular, he is criticized for having handed the fate of Brazilian football into the hands of Neymar family, in particular of the father who would have vetoed the choice - before that of Ancelotti - of the Portuguese Jorge Jesus, who had done very well at Flamengo but who at Al Hilal did not get along with Neymar, who in the meantime has returned to his homeland, to Santos. The former ace of Barça and Psg is plagued by injuries and his career objectively seems to be over, but he has made up his mind to participate in his last World Cup and – according to the Brazilian press – turned up his nose at the name of Jesus, effectively forcing the Federation to divert its preference to Ancelotti, notoriously an excellent manager of champions.
Ancelotti will debut on June 5th
Qualification for the 2026 World Cup does not appear to be at risk, but the green and gold have long since fallen into a spiral of technical confusion and mediocrity: since Tite's farewell after the 2022 Cup, three coaches have been tried, one worse than the other. The last one, Dorival Jr., He was fired after the heavy goleada suffered at the end of March by Argentina (4-1), a national team that in the World Cup qualifiers had never won with a 3-goal margin over its Portuguese rivals. Since then, the Seleçao has been without a coach: Ancelotti, who will presumably be presented at the end of May, will debut on June 5th away against Ecuador. A complicated match even if Brazil has a good margin in the standings and should not risk not showing up next year in USA-Canada-Mexico, where 6 South American teams will be admitted plus a repechage (in short, it will be easier to qualify than not, even Venezuela could do it for the first time in history).
Ancelotti's numbers
The real challenge for Ancelotti will be to do well at the World Cup, possibly taking home the cup, although not everyone in Brazil is optimistic: some commentators are pointing out – and not without reason – that today's Ancelotti is probably the worst ever, coming off a disappointing season with Real Madrid, in which he was repeatedly pelted by Barcelona and was badly eliminated from the Champions League. In short, even overseas there are those who suspect that the 66-year-old coach from Reggio is "done". However, the fact remains that he won with the Merengues the beauty of 15 titles and that the precedents of a coach hired by the Seleçao just one year before the World Cup bode well.
In fact, Brazil has won 5 World Cups and on 4 occasions the coach had signed just before the event. Only in 1994, with Carlos Alberto Parreira, was there a “long cycle” and not a last minute leader. Ancelotti is practically last minute since he will only have a handful of games to find the right balance, but he is a cup man: in his long career he has won 24. And then he had Brazil in his destiny: as a player he won the championship in Rome with Falcao; in the cinema he acted with the “phenomenon” Carioca Aristoteles in the Longobarda under the orders of Lino Banfi; and finally he coached the most Brazilian Milan ever, that of Kakà, Dida, Cafu, Serginho, Pato and others. In his career Ancelotti coached 43 Brazilian players. He will need much less to try to win the World Cup.
