World Cup: Day 25

Let’s play the next game at the top of Mount Everest. Fucking bring it on. Love’s got the world in motion and Erling Haaland is about to know what we can do.

Ok, ok, it’s out of my system. Let’s talk football.

Brazil 1-2 Norway

Carlo Ancelotti knows that his “main” job isn’t coaching a tactical system.

He didn’t always know this. He played for Arrigo Sacchi, Italian football’s greatest ever tactical innovator if not the country’s most successful manager in terms of trophies (Ancelotti himself might have the best claim to that), then worked his first coaching job as Sacchi’s assistant at the Italy national team before moving into management. In his early jobs, he was truly following Sacchi’s principles. Think Pep Guardiola and Johan Cruyff. He would force players to adapt to The System. But things changed.

Ancelotti’s Parma came close to signing Roberto Baggio, one of the most gifted and celebrated players in the country. But the manager wasn’t sure. “I had one system that I learnt at Milan from Arrigo Sacchi”, Ancelotti recalled. “It was 4-4-2. And for this I refused to have Roberto Baggio at Parma because he wanted to play No10. I said, ‘No, I don’t play No10.’ He was one of the best players in the world at the time and I refused to have him because I just wanted to play with two strikers.

“Today, I would say, ‘Baggio, come to Parma, and we’ll arrange the situation.’ Instead, I told him, ‘Listen, Roberto, there is no space for you’ — and he went to Bologna instead. It was a mistake and I tried to change my idea when I went to Juventus. I had [Zinedine, but come on, you didn’t need me to tell you that] Zidane, and he was No10. Should I put him right, or left? Impossible. Zidane is the most important player in my team and he has to be No10 and I have to adapt. From there I always took into account the characteristics of the players to build the system.”

From there, Ancelotti completely flipped. He adapted to fit the needs of the job and surroundings. That meant finding roles for star players. But, crucially, it meant doing what his bosses wanted. I can’t find a link for this right now, but I’ve heard Tim Vickery say quite a few times that Ancelotti describes his job as to “make the President happy”.

After Juventus, Ancelotti headed to Milan, working for the most calm-headed, reasonable and normal chairman in football, Silvio Berlusconi. The Donald Trump of Italy clearly loved the glamour of big name superstars, with a team built around Rui Costa, Andriy Shevchenko and Filippo Inzaghi apparently not enough. During Ancelotti’s long spell at Milan, the club signed all of Rivaldo, Clarence Seedorf, Kaká, Cafu, Hernán Crespo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and David Beckham. Ancelotti had to become skilled at keeping Berlusconi happy by playing the superstars and making sure they didn’t go and complain to the country’s Prime Minister.

Then he went to Chelsea, working with another extremely normal man in Roman Abramovich. Chelsea were more trigger happy than forcing stars into the team, so Ancelotti was able to win the league title by building a positive environment before things fell apart the next year. The one big signing forced on him was Fernando Torres, who didn’t really fit what Ancelotti wanted to do yet the manager continually worked to accommodate him alongside Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka. No one would deliberately construct an attack of those three, but Ancelotti really did try to make it work where most managers would’ve left one on the bench and fought with Abramovich over it.

Then came Real Madrid. That club is all about keeping Florentino Pérez happy. Ancelotti never wavered in his aims to keep everyone involved and make sure the Presidents signings started. No one ever checked out. Bust ups were avoided. He made the President happy.

Now, he’s at Brazil, and the “President” so to speak is essentially the Brazilian public.

Since arriving in the job, Ancelotti has generally preferred a 4-4-2. This let him get the attackers he wanted on the pitch. But, like just about every Brazil team I’ve watched in my lifetime, they don’t have the midfielders to control games, especially in a 4-4-2. The big breakthrough of the past year was bringing in Lucas Paquetá nominally as a wide player, but moving into midfield and adding the numerical superiority. This let things click to an extent, until it went very wrong in the first half of Japan. Losing Raphinha earlier in the tournament was a huge blow, but losing Paquetá forced a rethink. It actually saved the game in the second half against Japan when they switched to throwing people forward and crossing the ball in a true 4-4-2 shape, but it’s not a starting strategy. It doesn’t have enough control. Ancelotti needed to rethink things here and he just didn’t.

Brazil get a fairly early penalty that Bruno Guimarães misses. It happens. But they didn’t create an awful lot after that. They were very open in midfield because, for the millionth time, Casemiro can’t run like he used to. This was obviously the wrong tactical format. Ancelotti’s first thought with subs should’ve been fixing that. Instead he changed the striker, and in fairness, Endrick did contribute more than Matheus Cunha. He’s clearly a talent. But it wasn’t a real fix.

Endrick, though, is who the people wanted. The public wanted him on the pitch. And they wanted someone else. They wanted Neymar, the man Ancelotti clearly didn’t want to call up.

The subs probably threw away the game because they didn’t offer more control. They made things more vertical and more exposed. Erling Haaland is a machine and there’s nothing to be done about that, so you have to find a way to control the game first.

Ancelotti played to the crowd when something else was needed. He was the gentle compromising force when Brazil needed someone who could tell them hard truths about how to play football. I don’t know what comes next for them. I do know Norway now play England, so let’s talk about the other game here.

Mexico 2-3 England

Thomas Tuchel was talking differently this time.