A month out from the World Cup, Brazil’s head coach Carlo Ancelotti appears, as always, utterly at ease.
Now 66, Ancelotti has seen it all, and worked for them all: Silvio Berlusconi at Milan, Roman Abramovich at Chelsea, the Emir of Qatar at Paris Saint-Germain, Aurelio De Laurentiis at Napoli and, over two spells, Florentino Perez at Real Madrid.
As for the players he has coached, it is the stuff of absurd fantasy; both Ronaldos, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Karim Benzema, Didier Drogba, Zinedine Zidane, Kaka, Gareth Bale, Clarence Seedorf… we could go on and on and on.
So many of them seemed to like him, too. When Ancelotti was fired at Chelsea, John Terry and Frank Lampard joined him at the goodbye party. Kaka said Ancelotti leaves behind a “nice feeling in a player’s heart”.
His success is off the scale; titles in all five major European domestic leagues and a five-time winner of the Champions League, which is two more than any of his peers. Ancelotti secured Chelsea’s first Premier League and FA Cup double, delivered PSG’s first French title in 19 years and ended Madrid’s 12-year wait for La Decima (their 10th European Cup/Champions League triumph) in his first season at the club in 2014. Then, after six years away, he went back to the Bernabeu for a second spell in 2021 and immediately won it again. And then again two seasons after that.
Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid won the Champions League in 2024, his third with the club and fifth overall as a manager (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Yet, for Brazil, Ancelotti’s hire was a step outside of their comfort zone. He is their first foreign coach in more than 60 years. A coach who wins, for a nation that had stopped winning. And, on Monday, he will unveil the 26-man squad he believes can win Brazil’s first World Cup since 2002.
He says he already knows 24 of the players he intends to select. “These are the easiest ones,” Ancelotti tells The Athletic, in an interview last week via video call from the national association’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. “The most difficult is to find out the other two (places). The competition is really high.”
Ancelotti says he and his staff have assessed over 70 Brazilians playing club football across the globe. They have tracked talent within Brazil and across Europe’s leading leagues, and then cast the net to Turkey, Russia and Saudi Arabia. As the clock ticks down, games involving eligible players are less about assessing quality and more about hoping they don’t pick up injuries.
“I am really scared, really worried watching games,” he says. He has already lost Madrid pair Eder Militao and Rodrygo to long-term issues and 19-year-old Chelsea winger Estevao is very unlikely to be involved after a bad hamstring injury.
In Brazil, the debate surrounds Neymar, now 34 and playing in the domestic league with Santos. He has struggled for form and fitness since suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee in October 2023 but retains a level of celebrity within the imagination of the Brazilian public.
“I was expecting this question,” says Ancelotti, half-teasing, half-weary.
Neymar “was and is” part of his thinking, Ancelotti says, but a decision will be taken “at the end of the evaluation”.
“He is a great talent,” Ancelotti says. “What we have to look for with him is not if he’s able to trap the ball or pass the ball. It is (about) if his condition is good.”
Neymar is back playing in Brazil (Ricardo Moreira/Getty Images)
The Italian says he first held talks with Brazil’s federation in spring 2023, but at that time, he was close to extending his deal with Madrid. “I said to them, ‘If I don’t close the contract with Real Madrid, I can come’. But at the end, I renewed with Real Madrid.
“And then they waited. Honestly, the CBF (the Brazilian football federation) awaited me, and then I signed last year.”
The appeal was obvious: Ancelotti brings order where others discover chaos. Madrid, the team he left at the end of last season, have descended into in-fighting and recriminations this time around.
Speaking before club president Florentino Perez’s extraordinary press conference on Tuesday night, Ancelotti says Madrid are still the club team he will choose to watch first, but acknowledges “it has not been a good season”. He has heard the reports about a possible return for Jose Mourinho, a man he describes as a “big friend” and his predecessor at the Bernabeu from 2010 to 2013.
“To be back at Real Madrid, I will be really happy for him,” Ancelotti says. “He can do a fantastic job, as he always did in all the clubs that he was at.”
In recent times, Ancelotti stands alone in his ability to unify the Madrid dressing room, a human blanket dousing any flames. How did he manage those egos and mould a winning team?
“As usual, I tried to have a relationship with the person — not with the player — because what you are is a person. You are just a person that plays football. That is clear in my mind.
“After that, the difficulties of Real Madrid… the old generation of players has to be rebuilt. In the last years, Real Madrid lost really important players: Casemiro, (Toni) Kroos, (Luka) Modric, (Karim) Benzema, Nacho. The atmosphere in the squad is important, it comes from these players, who have more character, more personality and more leadership. So Real Madrid needs time to rebuild this environment in the squad, which gave them a lot of success (before). It’s not only a problem of technical quality. To have success, it is also to find a good balance.”
Does the hierarchy at Madrid understand this? “Yes,” he nods. “It is the club that understands more than any other this kind of problem.”
From the outside, it appears that every time a coach arrives with a big tactical idea, perhaps as Xabi Alonso or previously Rafa Benitez experienced, pushback comes from star players who crave greater freedom.
Ancelotti shakes his head. “Nooo…”
“No,” he repeats, becoming animated for the first time. “Because it (makes it sound like) that players at Real Madrid do what they want. It’s not true. Absolutely bulls***. It is absolutely bulls***.
“Not true! The players… when I was there, I had an idea and tried to discuss this idea with the players, and I would see if they agreed or not. We even did this in the final of the Champions League. When I have an idea, the player has to be part of this idea. I don’t want to impose strategy. But that does not mean that we do not have a strategy.
“We had a strategy, and we had a strong strategy, because we won two Champions League trophies in four years, and the players were really focused to follow the strategy and follow the plan. The idea that Real Madrid doesn’t want to follow a strategy, it is not true.”
In modern football, some coaches arrive with their idea and seek to enforce it upon the players. Ancelotti sees management differently. He sees engaging with the squad as a strength.
“Talking to the players about strategy, in my career it was really important because I had a lot of ideas coming from players. Andrea Pirlo, for example, when I put him as a holding midfielder (at Milan), it was an idea from Pirlo. He said, ‘Coach, try me as a holding midfielder. I am able to do this’.
“To talk with players is not a weakness. It’s just to do a really important action because I have to transmit my idea of football to the players. I don’t want soldiers on the pitch. I want players that are convinced of what to do on the pitch.”
In his new role, Ancelotti has perhaps found the international equivalent of Real Madrid, a club with a rich and successful history.
Brazil won five of 12 men’s World Cups between 1958 and 2002, while the yellow and green of their home jersey is as instantly recognisable as Madrid’s pristine white one.
Carlo Ancelotti takes charge of Brazil’s World Cup qualifier against Bolivia in September 2025 (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
His son Davide, who is among his assistants, has described coaching Brazil as “representing the country that represents football”. Ancelotti himself calls Brazil the “most historical national team” in the world. He says there is something “genetic” that passes talent from one Brazilian generation to the next, a nation whose reputation captures the imagination like no other. Yet when he chooses his team to challenge in North America this summer, Ancelotti will not be fooled by nostalgia or folklore.
“Listen, the last two World Cups that Brazil won were in 1994 and 2002. Everyone remembers, and me also, the pair of Romario and Bebeto in 1994, and of course the trio of Ronaldinho, Rivaldo and Ronaldo.
“But I do not forget that in ’94, Brazil played with two lines of four, with four strong defenders and four strong defensive midfielders: Mazinho, Dunga, Mauro Silva. Zinho. All midfielders. No wingers. Four midfielders, plus big talent up front in Romario and Bebeto.
“Then, in 2002. Nobody forgets Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Rivaldo. But I don’t forget that, for the first time in the World Cup, Brazil played with three centre-backs. The combination between defensive (organisation) and talent is the key of the success, and we are working on this.
“Of course, we have to keep talent because no country has a talent that always showed up in the Brazilian national team. But we have to add all the other components; a good spirit, attitude, working hard, sacrifice, all these kinds of things. Because talent alone is not able to win a World Cup. The last memory that I had of a player who won the World Cup alone was (Argentina’s) Diego Maradona, in 1986.”
Ancelotti smiles.
“But 1986 to 2026 is 40 years. And football has changed.”
As for his team’s chances this summer, Ancelotti is measured. His attacking options are star-studded and varied in style: Raphinha, Vinicius Junior, Matheus Cunha, Joao Pedro, Neymar, Gabriel Martinelli, Endrick, Estevao, Rayan and Igor Thiago.
“My team is a good team,” Ancelotti says. “We can compete with everyone. There are other really competitive teams: France, Spain, Argentina, England, Germany and Portugal. I had a look, over this year, at all the teams. There is no perfect team. Every team has its own problems. We have problems. We are not fully covered in all positions. The team who wins is not going to be perfect — it will be the team who is stronger and able to move (on) from mistakes.”
Ancelotti has watched the trends of club football this season. He calls the Premier League the “most exciting competition, no doubt, the intensity, the quality, the atmosphere in the stadium, the referees are all at a high level.” He describes its current leaders Arsenal as a “really strong team” who fully “deserve” to be in the final of the Champions League later this month against holders PSG.
As with Arsenal, he expects set pieces to be crucial at the World Cup. He cites data he has seen that indicates 30 per cent of goals come from dead-ball situations, but he has concentrated his players’ minds, too, on preparation for penalty shootouts in the knockout phase. During the most recent international meet-up in March, he had his players rehearsing their spot kicks, months out from the World Cup. The national team have a sports psychologist embedded in the setup.
“We have studied to try to find the routine, so we do not go to the penalty kick just like this,” he says, throwing his hands in the air as if leaving life to chance. “We cannot just be hoping that it’s going to go well. There is really interesting (research) about how you have to prepare to take a penalty. Of course, it is really difficult to replicate the environment and the emotion that the players can have. But to avoid this, it is important that the player knows what he has to do.”
Brazil have played 10 games under Ancelotti, six of which have been friendlies. They have won five but also faced teams as varied as Bolivia, Japan and France. Ancelotti says his focus is on improving performances, but, as always, he is trying to forge a culture.
“The most important part is the atmosphere that we have to be able to create in our environment, in our squad, in our dressing room,” he insists.
Ancelotti has been encouraged by the way Brazilians socialise. “They all have the same culture. They are religious and they talk to one another. They don’t look at the telephone when they are together. They play cards together.
“I have to say, in the clubs, there are more professional aspects. But the Brazilians really love their national team, they love their shirt… When the national team plays in Brazil, everything stops.”
After 34 years in coaching, this is Ancelotti’s first head coach role in international football. His previous international experience came with the Italian national team as assistant to Arrigo Sacchi, including a run to the final of that 1994 World Cup at the Pasadena Rose Bowl — when they lost on penalties against his newly adopted nation, Brazil.
It brings his coaching career full circle, returning to a World Cup in North America for the first time since the United States hosted that 1994 edition.
He finds it “unbelievable” that his own nation, four-time World Cup winners and the country he represented as a player at the 1986 and 1990 editions, will miss a third World Cup in succession. “A lot of problems in Italian football,” he sighs. “I hope they can solve this problem really fast. But now I think more Italians are going to support Brazil.”
He does not want to lower expectations and instead embraces the pressure that comes with being Brazil manager. “Brazil doesn’t want to be part of the World Cup,” he says. “Brazil wants to try to win. This is our responsibility.
“I had this same experience at Real Madrid. A lot of people ask why Real Madrid won six Champions League trophies in 10 years. The key is the expectation the club places on all the staff. When they win the Champions League, they congratulate you. But then they are already thinking how to win the next Champions League. Expectation gives more responsibility to you, but also more motivation and more focus on what you have to do.
He continues: “This responsibility is an honour… But I know that the big judgement about my job will be the success or otherwise of the national team. Through being in football for 40 years, I know this really well.”
