Ancelotti — Can the Quiet Leader Bring Order to Everton's Chaos?

Short of consistent success, nothing gets media coverage in the modern game quite like a good old-fashioned crisis and between the meltdown of Roberto Martinez's reign in 2016 to Marco Silva's tailspin in late 2019, Everton have obliged football's pundits, commentators and writers alike on a fairly regular basis.

With the accumulation of failed managerial tenures at Goodison Park, the question was demanded, particularly by outsiders, just what it means to be “Everton?”

“What do Everton fans want?” exasperated observers asked two years ago as Toffees fans chafed against the unwanted Sam Allardyce regime; this season, as the club's hierarchy appeared to be wracked by indecision around the collapse of Silva's regime and then over who should succeed him following his eventual dismissal, the debate centred around Everton's identity and what is often seen as an unrealistically expectant fanbase.

From Jamie Carragher in the Telegraph, who chided Evertonians for “living in a world where Farhad Moshiri should be trying to lure” the cream of Europe's managerial talent to Goodison; to Rory Smith in the New York Times, who pondered whether Everton had become crippled by the weight of its history which “makes innovation burdensome” and “the pressure from the fans to succeed — creates a febrile, tense environment [and] the bar for failure is lower when the expectations are higher,” and to Miguel Delaney in The Independent, who argued that, “the major issue [at Everton] is they have no current idea or plan for what they want to be,” there was a drumbeat of bemusement among the media at Everton's supporters, their ambition and what pundits deemed to be wildly unrealistic expectations.

That rankled somewhat because there is a misconception that Blues fans feel that their club has a divine right to be winning trophies and that every managerial selection should fast-track Everton into the Champions League. In the main, Blues fans are more realistic than that and few are under any many illusions about the length of the road between where the club currently finds itself and where they dream it can get to.

In a general sense, as described in an 1878 Magazine article (Our Rightful Place) two years ago, Evertonians feel that their club, with its rich history and traditions, is big enough to be mixing it up at the top of the domestic game but they're pragmatic enough to know that Everton are not currently in a position to realise that aim.

The least they demand in the meantime is that the Board demonstrate the requisite ambition and that the players on the pitch show the determination and fight that is asked of anyone who pulls on the Royal Blue jersey. An acknowledgement of how far the club is from realising its collective ambitions should not preclude supporters from having those aspirations in the first place and all they have asked is that the club show tangible signs of progress in the right direction. That wasn't always evident as Everton lurched from manager to manager amid questionable recruitment decisions.

What is Everton? Well, a large part of the club's DNA and its lifeblood was gloriously exposed by Duncan Ferguson in December. It's spirit, it's togetherness, it's football played with tempo and fearlessness backed by a bear-pit Goodison crowd cheering full-blooded challenges almost as much as fantastic attacking play.

Carragher opined, somewhat condescendingly, in his article that “the ideal Everton coach favours a finely-tuned combination of aggressive, front-foot football with a dash of skill” but he only got it part right; it's about much more than just a dash of skill. The real Everton is just as much about silk as it is about steel but when the former isn't in abundance, then it's the latter that can carry the team through as it did during the days of Joe Royle's Dogs of War.

That real Everton, one that has been missing at times since 1995 and which has seen a dreadful record on the grounds of the new “big six” worsen with each passing season, is also about about iron resolve when the chips are down and it might explain why this club has endured in the top flight of English football since 1954, made two last-day escapes from relegation in the 1990s and why, harnessed by Ferguson, the Toffees showed such stomach for the fight last month where Arsenal, for example, remained somewhat lethargic under their own interim boss, Freddie Ljungberg, until Mikel Arteta was drafted in to try and turn things around.

It's interesting, then, that while first, those looking in from the outside have been pondering Everton's identity and shaking their heads at what they perceive to be flights of fancy on the part of a fanbase living in the past and second, Ferguson was rediscovering so much of what had been missing on the pitch, the club should appoint Carlo Ancelotti as Silva's successor. Goodison Park was not the destination most people envisaged for the heralded statesman of European football with such a glittering list of achievements and who has done it all and won it all; surely London and the Emirates Stadium was more suited to a manager of Ancelotti's pedigree and accomplishments?

It is to Moshiri's credit that he continues to aim high and, having initially signalled his ambition when he sounded out the likes of Diego Simeone when looking for Ronald Koeman's replacement in 2017, he seized on the opportunity to present Ancelotti with an enticing opportunity at Goodison when he was sacked by Napoli. Tacitly, the Monaco-based businessman asked, “why not Ancelotti for Everton?” and while many assume that the attraction of compensation that reportedly puts him among the top three most highly-paid managers in Europe was probably decisive in his decision, the more you read about and from Ancelotti, the more you get the feeling it was more than just money that drew him to Everton.

Both Smith and Delaney in their aforementioned pieces for the New York Times and The Independent respectively tried to ascribe the Toffees' missteps under Moshiri to a general lack of vision and planning, a notion that came easily in early December when the club really did look and feel bereft of direction. Smith wrote: “Part of the explanation for that, of course, is unique to Everton: Moshiri's apparent lack of a coherent vision for what he wants his club to be; the failures of not one, but two much-vaunted sporting directors to spend his wealth wisely; the shortcomings of a succession of managers. Everton is typical of that breed of Premier League club that is incapable of long-term planning, that believes that money will solve all of the problems it creates for itself.”

Both were right, to an extent, that Moshiri has, perhaps, been guilty of believing that success could be achieved fairly quickly if you simply threw enough money at it and his decision to sack first Koeman and then Silva without a clear plan for succession in place opened him up to obvious criticism. Indeed, the fact that the club hierarchy appeared to veer from Vitor Pereira to David Moyes before the opportunity to approach Ancelotti – a wholly different kind of coach – presented itself was not suggestive of a cogent strategy around how the team should be managed

And while there are some who question, with some justification, why he hasn't injected enough commercial acumen and top-level business talent into the boardroom and the somewhat haphazard nature of his managerial searches, Moshiri has never lacked ambition and it is somewhat churlish to accuse him of lacking a plan even if it appears to be more “30,000-foot level” than precisely formulated.

The appointment of Koeman, an overwhelmingly popular choice, and the club's first Director of Football, Steve Walsh, described at the time by one journalist as perhaps the best move of the summer 2016 transfer window, were decisions made very much in accordance with a strategy to get Everton into the Champions League within three years. Having made what he felt were top-level hires and then backed them with a significant outlay on new players, Moshiri delegated to them and trusted them to be successful in their roles, trust that was ultimately proven to have been misplaced.

The faith he instilled in Silva, a coach with a tremendous amount of promise with the potential to build success at Goodison over the long term working alongside Walsh's eminently more qualified successor, Marcel Brands, also went unrewarded. But, again, there was a clear plan even if the man selected to carry it out fell short of what was required. And in terms of internal structure of the organisation on the playing side, the director-of-football model is designed to allow for the seamless coming and going of head coaches if the sporting director himself and his over-arching philosophies and influence remain the constant.

Meanwhile, off the field, Moshiri has a clear vision to finally deliver on the promise of an alternative to Goodison Park with a new stadium on the banks of the Mersey, one that will move to address some of the shortfalls in commercial and match-day revenue that are currently limiting Everton's forward progress.

So, there is a sense that while some of the things money can't buy — like passion, committed support, emotional investment from supporters and all of those magical intangibles mentioned above that go into making Everton what it is — are still very much in place, Moshiri is gradually remoulding the identity of the club with the aim of making that question that vexes outsiders — namely, what is Everton and what do they want? — that much easier to answer.

The stadium, if he can make it a reality, will be one significant piece of that equation but Ancelotti has the potential to be a monumental one on the playing side.

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“Everton are living in Cloud Cuckoo Land getting Carlo Ancelotti in as manager,” wrote Paul Merson after the Italian agreed to become the Toffees' new manager last month. “They've only got him because they are paying him big money. I hope he doesn't just go through the motions. I don't think he's got it in him to build a team. He's never done it before. Every team he's had has been built for him. He's just come in and steadied the ship, then disappeared somewhere else.”

It wouldn't be the first time that Merson has underestimated an Everton acquisition — the oft-mocked Sky Sports pundit famously derided the Blues for “ruining the transfer window” when they signed Richarlison for £40m in 2018 — and if he knew more about Ancelotti than superficially glancing over his various tenures over the past decade or so, he might not have come so quickly to such a definitive and dismissive conclusion.

He wasn't alone. Writing in The Times, Matt Dickinson also reduced Ancelotti's decision to one primarily about money and asked is “throwing a fortune to lure a coach of Ancelotti's pedigree really the basis for a long and successful relationship?” Even if you accept the assertion from an agent quoted by the journalist in his piece that, “Moshiri, the star-struck owner, had simply kept throwing money at the Italian until he could no longer say no,” the combination of Ancelotti's deep-seated desire to win and his professional pride would preclude him from simply taking any old job just for the cash and ensure that he won't “just [go] through the motions,” as Merson fears he might. Besides, as Sam Wallace noted in The Telegraph, the renowned manager regards himself as “a man for all occasions, successful under all kinds of unreasonable owners and always capable of finding a way.”

Unfortunately, Moshiri's track record to date makes it easy for outsiders to regard Everton with such scepticism and borderline derision. But what the naysayers overlook is the fundamental appeal that the club can hold for the right candidate — one old enough to remember the Blues' glory days when they were on the cusp of ruling Europe at a time when his own AC Milan were going through a period of struggle, one able to identify Merseyside's sleeping giant and one who might just have been looking for just such a project but not found it in Paris, Munich or Naples in recent years.

The criticism that was levelled at Ancelotti when Everton first approached him was that, since leaving Milan in 2009, he hasn't stayed in one place for more than two seasons. Superficially, it suggests a manager who either can't make the grade — his glittering collection of trophies obviously makes a mockery of that notion — or one who is always looking for the next challenge when the reality has been quite different.

It's clear from his book, Quiet Leadership — Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches, that he was under few illusions about how brief his stay in Madrid might end up being when he joined the Galacticos in 2013 given Real's insatiable hunger for silverware and the frequency with which they hire and fire coaches in pursuit of it. Likewise at Juventus, always an awkward fit given his history with Milan, and Chelsea under another trigger-happy owner in the form of Roman Abramovich where he was sacked after just a couple of years.

At Bayern Munich, a settled club with an established hierarchy of figures made up largely of former players, Ancelotti might have hoped that relative stability might foster a longer-lasting relationship when he succeeded Pep Guardiola. However, despite steering Bayern to the league title in 2016-2017, he would last little more than a season in the Bundesliga, the players' apparent distrust of his methods forcing Karl-Heinz Rummenigge's hand.

It is clear from his writing though — and while it post-dated the book's publication, it might have been true to an extent of his ambitions at Napoli — that he has really been seeking a long-term role like the one he had over eight years in Milan and he believed he had it when he took over at Paris St Germain in 2011. Having recently been taken over by Qatar Sports Investments, the Ligue 1 giants were in the early stages of a cash-infused reconstruction and Ancelotti was fully prepared to put the time and effort into what he dubbed “The Parisien Project” and to craft a side capable of delivering sustained success and the Champions League trophy that Nasser Al-Khelaifi desires.

Unfortunately, it became clear in his second season at PSG that the relationship with the owner and the club's general director, Leonardo, would not be tenable over the long-term. He and Zlatan Ibrahimović had dreamed of building a winning team at Parc de Princes but it was not to be and his co-author, Professor Chris Brady, says that it was one of the bigger regrets of his career that he wasn't able to see that to fruition. Instead, he would spend the next six years at three different clubs in the role for which it seems he is now known — the tinkerer, the tweaker, the polisher of already great sides who either turns them into trophy-winners or keeps them as such.

What “Carletto” accomplished at Milan remains one of his proudest achievements, however, not only because he helped build it but because he regarded the whole setup as family — and if there are three themes that run throughout Quiet Leadership, together with his insistence on professionalism, they are the importance of family, culture and loyalty. Ancelotti noted that some clubs, Juve in particular, are more like companies while some are more like families and there are few clubs where that latter word is more applicable than at Everton.

It was a notion that Koeman didn't ever seem to buy into — the Dutchman was said to be cold and aloof at times and frequently left Finch Farm early to play golf — whereas Ancelotti eschewed his second home in Vancouver over the Festive period at the end of last year in favour of immersing himself in the city of Liverpool and getting to know his new surroundings and the people. If the 60-year-old is as he comes across, he could well have found himself his next family and a long-term project that he can really sink his teeth into. If he can be successful at Goodison, it might also be his biggest and most impressive accomplishment yet.

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For those observers who didn't deride Everton's appointment of Ancelotti as a ludicrous fit, the biggest doubt was whether he was built for sorting out the mess at Goodison and the long reconstruction job that would follow. Again, that was based on his reputation for working with the superstars of the game; would this member of European football royalty be able to craft a winning side from a collection of players who were either under-performing or simply not up to the level demanded by the ambition of the club and its owner?

It wouldn't be the first time. As Ibrahimović writes in Ancelotti's book about their early days at PSG: “We'd make jokes about the situation. ‘My God, what have we done, what have we come to, what is this place?' we'd ask each other. ‘What do we now, what do we do first, what do we do next?'”

Of course, to suggest he's not up to it is a massive slight on Ancelotti's proven accumulated knowledge, tactical acumen and adaptability, it discounts the foundations of his entire management ethos — namely, relationships, man-management and mutual respect. As the Italian takes charge of a dysfunctional team riddled with issues around mentality you get the impression that Ancelotti's brand of quiet leadership — backed by a body of work and reputation that his young predecessor, who was similarly introverted but without his elder's considerable gravitas — might be exactly what this Everton side needs.

“As a coach and tactician, he taught me an incredible amount,” explained his former assistant, Paul Clement. “But equally important is what I learned from him as a person. I watched how he dealt with people and relationships, managing to be strong in his ways and ideas and make sure the dressing room was a disciplined place, while at the same time developing strong relationships with players. He made them feel comfortable. Got the best out of them.”

The other thing that was overlooked during the examination and scepticism of Moshiri's ambitious leap was that having signed a four-and-a-half-year contract, Ancelotti has come on board not only to address the short-term issues at Everton but to lay the groundwork for finally realising the Iranian-born businessman's Champions League ambition. The doubts expressed over Ancelotti's suitability to Everton were based on the job as it is now and not the one it could be in two or three years' time. The vision is that some day soon, he will once again be back to what he supposedly does best — managing the best players in the game — at Everton!

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Though far removed from Chelsea, both in terms of culture, geography and current standing within the game, Ancelotti will have found plenty to both admire and find familiar when he arrived at Everton. Though he had been used to taking his backroom staff with him wherever he went prior to his spell at Stamford Bridge, he would find huge value of retaining some of the existing staff at Chelsea (where Roman Abramovich and Frank Arnesen insisted that he try working with the coaches already place for a month rather than making sweeping changes by bringing in his own people) to the extent that it changed his thinking from that point onward.

And in the same way that the likes of Ray Wilkins, Zinedine Zidane and Claude Makélélé acted as Ancelotti's “Cultural Bridge” at Chelsea, Madrid and PSG respectively, Duncan Ferguson will be providing him invaluable insight on how things are done at Everton. His copy of the Howard's Way DVD will also come in handy in that respect!

So, in addition to an unwavering commitment to professionalism, mutual respect and a passion for winning, what have Everton got in Carlo Ancelotti and what might he bring to the club apart from a staggering CV and the status as the most decorated manager in the club's history?

Evertonians have been given some early indications over the first six weeks of his tenure, particularly now that the most hectic part of the fixture calendar is out of the way. Ancelotti's influence not only on the team's style but it's effectiveness was noticeably visible once he had had the benefit of a few days on the training pitch at Finch Farm with his players.

Prior to that, he had overseen back-to-back victories over Burnley and Newcastle but also witnessed first-hand how infuriatingly ineffective and mentally fragile his new charges can be with a fairly limp display at Manchester City on New Year's Day and then the nadir of the season at Anfield in the FA Cup. After the win over Brighton and more frustration at the London Stadium against a vulnerable West Ham outfit, the reverse fixture against Newcastle at Goodison Park highlighted, of course, just how exciting the Ancelotti era could be while also underlining once more those defensive frailties and deficiencies in game-management that he will work to eventually eradicate.

Publicly, at least, Ancelotti greeted those ludicrous last couple of injury-time minutes against the Magpies that will stick in the craw at least until the next victory, in typically sanguine fashion but his former players are quick to point out that every now and then that amenable demeanour can give way to outbursts of anger that leave no one in any doubt as to his feelings — even if they can't always understand his Italian diatribes!

“When it comes to being professional, however, and it doesn't go how he wants, he can get angry,” Ibrahimović explained, referencing a particular incident when the Italian once kicked a box in the changing room out of anger that hit the Swede on the head. “At half-time you always know when something is going on because that one eyebrow goes up. As I sat down, I thought, ‘Now he's angry!' When he gets angry, he gets angry — but only out of sight. Only in the dressing room.”

Ancelotti is on record as saying that he favours 4-4-2 as the most effective formation in football — in that respect, Richarlison's increasing effectiveness as a central striker and Ferguson's recognition of that fact has paved the way nicely for the new manager's arrival — but far from being set in his ways or wed to any particular system or way of playing, the Italian is highly flexible and adaptable, placing the emphasis on finding a way to win with the tools at his disposal rather than enforcing his will on his players.

The anecdotes from his former players and peers, some of the best to have ever played or managed in the game — Cristiano Ronaldo, Ibrahomović, Maldini, Beckham, Nesta, Sir Alex Ferguson — that are interspersed within Quiet Leadership are universally positive. Not mere platitudes, they reveal true admiration, respect and highlight Ancelotti's man-management, attention to personal relationships and desire to find out what players want as much as they need as being one of — if not the — greatest skill he possesses.

That could be invaluable for younger players like Tom Davies, Moise Kean and Mason Holgate who have needed special attention for differing reasons this season (some related to form; others related to an important new role in the side) but it also bodes well for the likes of André Gomes, Yerry Mina, Richarlison and Bernard, players who wouldn't have looked too out of place at some of Ancelotti's former clubs and who will form the foundation of the team he hopes to build at Everton.

This, after all, was the man whose brainchild it was to turn Andrea Pirlo from an effective attacking midfielder into arguably the best deep-lying playmakers of his generation and it's exciting to think what he might do with natural ball-players like Gomes (a player who has under-achieved in some respects since arriving from Barcelona) and Holgate.

Then there is the prospect of what he might achieve in terms of recruitment working alongside Marcel Brands, starting in the summer when, hopefully, he will have enough funds to start placing strategically-picked personnel into the squad.

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By many accounts, with their reported pursuit of Pereira coming up empty, Everton came perilously close to appointing David Moyes as Silva's successor — interim or otherwise — last month. It still feels a little surreal to say that the club ended up with none other than Carlo Ancelotti instead. The dour Scot and the avuncular Italian might not be polar opposites in terms of their styles leadership but it's not a stretch to suggest that there are quantum differences between them in terms of success, outlook and gravitas.

Farhad Moshiri's hiring of the Italian may have owed much to fortunate timing, opportunism and an enticing salary package but it's quite possible he could end up being the most inspired appointment of the Iranian's reign at Goodison. After years of fluctuating fortunes, false dawns and instability in the dugout, some of Ancelotti's legendarily calm stewardship is probably just what is needed while, off the pitch, the club prepares to up sticks for Bramley-Moore Dock.

Quite apart from anything else, a manager of his standing and reputation should immediately improve the calibre of player that Everton could attract to Merseyside and provide a lure to go with the financial backing that Moshiri has provided and promises to make available going forward.

Evertonians have been through enough heartache and disappointment in recent years to be getting ahead of themselves about their new manager and what might lie ahead with him at the helm. Despite his pedigree and all his achievements, there are no guarantees of success. Nevertheless, if you had to pick someone to help lead you out of chaos, uncertainty and chronic under-achievement, you could do far worse than choose one of the most successful managers in European history.

If Ancelotti has indeed been searching for a new project, a new home and a new family, he could well have found it on the Blue half of Merseyside. If all goes like we dream it can, the answer to the question “what is Everton?” could well have a very different answer in a few years to come.

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