Twenty years of career on the bench are not enough because football always knows how to give new challenges. Even Carlo Ancelotti seems to know this, awaited at twenty-four hours of passion before finding himself at the San Paolo for what will be the crossroads game of this season: on the one hand the elimination against an Arsenal that seven days earlier imposed his law to Emirates , on the other a company that would have made a resounding and that would write an important page in the history book of the blue club.
A new challenge for Carletto, because if Napoli and the Neapolitans have already experienced similar situations in the past – many, in recent days, have recalled the famous 3-0 with which the Bianchi team managed to overturn Juventus in the UEFA Cup. Sao Paulo after the 2-0 defeat in Turin in 1989 – the former coach of Milan, Real Madrid, Psg, Chelsea and Bayern Monaco has never faced a situation like the one that will appear in Fuorigrotta tomorrow night. Never, in fact, in the European Cups have Ancelotti’s teams found themselves having to reassemble a similar liability in the return race and in front of their own audience.
Of defeats with a comeback, of course, there are some in Carletto’s memories. In the 2006-07 Champions League season, for example, his Milan set Manchester United with a 3-0 comeback after losing 3-2 at Old Trafford in the first leg. Or, again, in the UEFA Cup in 2001-02, always with the Rossoneri, Carletto’s team found itself defeated in the first leg against Hapoel Tel Aviv in the first leg of the quarter-finals by 1-0 and was able to recover and pass the next game round with a 2-0 in Milan that avoided any problems.
The only occasion in which a 2-0 hit Ancelotti came in his short Spanish stay. In the 2014-15 season, in fact, the one following the victory of the “Decima” with Real Madrid, the king’s blancos found themselves under 2-0 in the Copa del Rey in the first leg of the round of 16. And in the national derby of the return to the Real Madrid did not know how to reverse the situation: at the Bernabeu ended 2-2, a draw that obviously qualified the Colchoneros and put an end to the adventure of the Italian coach on the bench of the Galacticos.
To find a dream comeback after a 2-0 pass in the first leg, Ancelotti has to dig into the drawers from his memory and go back to when he was wearing shoes before the coach’s jacket. It was 1983-84, Carletto played in Liedholm’s Roma and in the semifinals of the then European Cup the Giallorossi lost the first leg at Dundee United’s home with that result. On their return to the Olimpico the capital’s challenge marked an incredible comeback, a 3-0 that everyone still remembers and that brought Roma into the final, then lost against Liverpool. Ancelotti, however, that double round then winning had to see him from the stands: an injury to his left knee, in fact, had not allowed him to close the year in the field, one of the worst remorse of his footballing career, perhaps to try to rewrite now that shoes no longer wears them.
From: Il Mattino.