Managers do NOT get better with age... but Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti is the outlier as the 64-year-old seeks his FIFTH Champions League triumph

It is five years since Carlo Ancelotti walked into a room at Goodison Park, Everton, and began what we all thought would be the gradual winding down of a great career. 

The great Italian was 60-years-old. Every box had been ticked. He was, we suspected, still working simply because he didn’t really know how to stop. 

The trajectory of that decade had gone Chelsea, PSG, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Napoli and then Everton. His direction of travel seemed set.

But Ancelotti’s has proved itself to be a career that hasn’t wanted to die or gracefully accept the creep of time, the passing of the years. So on Friday, not long before tea-time, he walked into another room, this time at Wembley, ahead of what will be his seventh Champions League final as a manager.

‘I was in the final ten years ago,’ Ancelotti smiled, referring to Real Madrid’s win over Atletico Madrid in Lisbon.

‘I am older but I still feel young. A lot of things have happened but this experience still feels the same.’

There is a misconception in football that coaches and managers get better with age. The truth is that most of the truly great ones have reached the top of the arc rather sooner than they would imagine.

Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Louis van Gaal, Fabio Capello, Marcelo Lippi and – going back a little further – even Brian Clough were all looking at their best work in their rearview mirror by the time they reached their early 60s. Mourinho, as if to prove the point, was appointed coach of Fenerbahce in Turkey at the age of 61.

Ancelotti – along with Sir Alex Ferguson – are the outliers. Ferguson stepped away at Manchester United having won a Premier League title at the age of 71. Ancelotti is 65 next week and by the time his current contract expires will be on the cusp of 67.

His Real Madrid team have won La Liga twice in the last three years and if they beat Borussia Dortmund in London on Saturday evening will be able to say the same thing about the Champions League.

The truth is that Ancelotti has always made it look easy, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

‘It is a double-edged sword,’ said Ancelotti, who left Everton for a second spell at Real in 2021.

‘We know we need to enjoy this to the maximum but then the concern starts that it could go wrong because we are so close to the most important thing in football, which is a Champions League.

‘There is a fear, a concern that grows out of that. It is a feeling we all have inside. We have extreme happiness to be here but when you reach a final success is so close that you start worrying. I know it is going to start tonight, tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon.

‘A lot of fear is normal. The more fear you have the happier you are if you are able to win in the end.’

The records show that Ancelotti has come out the right side of this equation more often than not. 

If Real win on Saturday evening, it would be their manager’s fifth Champions League triumph as a manager (three with Real and two with Milan) and he can add that number to the two European Cups won under the competition’s old format as a player with the great Italian club.

This season, his team have twice come close to exiting the competition. Real held on to beat Manchester City on penalties at the Etihad Stadium in the last eight and then scored two late goals to turn defeat in to victory in the second leg of their semi-final against Harry Kane and Bayern at the Bernabeu.

‘I have to say that this has happened so many times that it cannot be a coincidence,’ said Ancelotti.

‘There is something special about this club. It’s really important to study it. There is something definitely special but I don’t know what it depends on. It could be a mixture of tradition and history and quality and the character of the players.

‘But it’s happened so many times it just cannot be coincidence.’

Before that game in the Spanish capital early last month, Bayern coach Thomas Tuchel suggested it was important to simply play the game rather than the myth of Real’s comebacks. It didn’t work out for him.

On Saturday, Borussia Dortmund face the same challenge. The Germans are not without pedigree themselves in this competition, having won it in 1997 and lost a tight final here at Wembley to Bayern eleven years ago.

Regardless, the task before them here is sizeable. Edin Terzic’s team finished fifth in the Bundesliga and saved their stand-out results for Europe where they knocked out Atletico in the last eight and PSG in the semi-finals. Against the French side Borussia didn’t concede a goal in either leg.

Terzic, once an assistant manager to Slaven Bilic at West Ham, saw his team begin the domestic season slowly but has subsequently seen belief grow through a team that has been followed to London by more than 30,000 supporters.

‘I have huge respect for Carlo Ancelotti,’ said the 41-year-old.

‘He is a role model for all young coaches and I see myself as one of them.

‘But in my mind you don't play a final, you win a final. That is our clear goal. We are happy to be here but we are ready to compete at the highest level.

‘Maybe if you play 10 times against Real Madrid, it is very difficult to win. If you play 34 times, it's impossible. But if you break it down to one game, a final, everything is possible.

‘We have had 60 games to prepare ourselves for this. It is clear Real have a role as favourites but we don't care.

‘If we are brave and ready to show that we are not here to see how Real Madrid lift their next trophy, if we are here to give them a game, then we have a chance.’