The consensus of opinion seems to be that Chelsea want Carlo Ancelotti because he knows how to win the Champions League. Chelsea's most successful manager, Jose Mourinho, was recruited on that basis and did not do too badly, though he was never able to replicate the Champions League success he had with Porto with a far stronger squad at Stamford Bridge. Under Mourinho, Chelsea won back-to-back domestic titles but failed to reach a European Cup final.
Yet Mourinho, without necessarily falling for all the "special one" baloney, came fully equipped to meet the challenge of working in England. Not only was he a fluent speaker of the language, having worked as a translator for Bobby Robson, he was a keen student of the English game, relatively young, and ready to move on to embrace a new sporting culture in whichever of the bigger European leagues would offer him a route out of Portugal.
Ancelotti is none of these things, although at 49 he is far from over the hill. Italian football is very different from English football in a way that Portuguese football is not. And while Ancelotti has won enough and done enough to be taken seriously in any country, he has done most of his work in one country with one club. So this is a risk for Chelsea, even if their new £6m manager gets the sort of budget to bring a couple of luxury signings with him, which the late bid for Kaka suggests he might do.
Fabio Capello has made the transition well enough, but Capello does not have games every week and he does not have to go to Stoke. (Please don't write in, Stoke fans. Arsène Wenger started the trend for using your club as shorthand for the physical intensity of the English game, and I think he meant it as a compliment.) Luiz Felipe Scolari has won a World Cup, but he couldn't manage the Premier League. Too many games, too many decisions to make all at once, too little understanding of the English psyche. You could see immediately when Guus Hiddink came in he had that understanding, just as Mourinho had before him. It is not immediately obvious that Ancelotti will fit as well, but we shall see.
What is most interesting about the appointment is the stated emphasis on the Champions League. Ancelotti has already stressed its importance, knowing it is the competition Roman Abramovich most wants to win, describing it as a beautiful sensation. That is not quite the impression one had when Chelsea were departing it last month, but let that pass. Abramovich appears to believe that a manager who can supervise a couple of Champions League wins and one spectacular near miss with one great club ought to be able to do the same with a different club in a different country. He may be wrong. Not so much about the Champions League as about the rest of the package.
In this country we do not pick and choose. The one thing Ancelotti will not be able to do in England is concentrate on the Champions League, loitering off the pace in domestic events and only springing to life when Wednesday comes. That might be the best way to win a Champions League, if you have the quality at your disposal, but you cannot stop and start in England. The league is too unforgiving. Chelsea need to be beating Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United in the Premier League as well as in the later stages of the Champions League, and if they cannot Ancelotti will be in trouble. That's not even mentioning Stoke. Or Everton or Manchester City.
England has never had a team that deliberately selected the Champions League at the expense of all domestic competition – we'll assume Liverpool were doing it by accident a few years ago – and while the end might be considered to justify the means, Ancelotti will be a remarkable coach indeed if he even attempts it, never mind succeeds.
In England, the accepted way is to go for everything, just as Mourinho and Hiddink did. They might have both stumbled at the last hurdle in Europe, though goodness knows they came close. And Chelsea supporters, as opposed to the club's owner, do not actually mind narrowly missing out on the big European prize as long as they are winning trophies at home.
You need to take the long view in these situations, which is exactly what Chelsea have been unable to do since parting company with Mourinho. In his short time at Chelsea Abramovich has had two managers who were a perfect fit for the club, and has managed to let both slip through his fingers. Most people reckon Mourinho or Hiddink would have been able to deliver a European Cup given time, and were unlucky for their different reasons that it was not available to them.
We now wait eagerly to see how much time Ancelotti gets. He is not coming to a club in trouble, which is usually the case with new managers, but a club close to the peak of its powers that has at times in the past three or four years been superbly well organised. So good luck to the Italian with his new challenge. Good luck to him just living up to Hiddink's standard.
Pass the Cup around? No chance
As thoroughly effective a coach as Guus Hiddink has proved himself to be, he has not actually won that many trophies in his long and well-travelled career, and there is no doubt he was genuinely happy to sign off his Chelsea caretakership with the FA Cup. Not least because it pleased the boss as well. After going out of the Champions League in highly contentious circumstances and not quite managing to catch up with Manchester United and Liverpool in the Premier League, Hiddink was glad to be able the help Chelsea end their season on a high.
"This club must win silverware every season," he said at Wembley.
So it must, and there was nothing wrong with Hiddink saying so. Yet one could not help but feel relieved that David Moyes and Everton were out of earshot. The flip side to a club such as Chelsea insisting on at least a trophy per season is precious few prizes to be shared among everyone else. Everton have been waiting 14 years, and though they are a more competitive side now than the one that won the Cup in 1995, and incomparably improved on the relegation-threatened squad that Moyes took over seven years ago, they are just as far from the front of the queue as ever.
This is the way football is now. There are clubs that must win prizes, and do, and clubs that cannot win prizes, and don't. I am aware that this might be stating the obvious, and that at no time in the past were there more than a dozen or so clubs capable of winning the game's major trophies, but there was a powerful contrast between the two managers at Wembley on Saturday. The only thing Moyes can win is the manager of the year award. He has worked wonders with a small squad and a limited budget and is constantly being touted as the best up-and-coming manager in Britain. Hiddink, on the other hand, was only here for four months and has now left. He only had a short time to make an impression but inherited such a strong, talented squad that given his experience and acumen he was able to taste success.
It's not quite fair, as Moyes did his best to suggest while trying not to sound ungracious in defeat. Everton did not let anyone down at Wembley and their fans contributed enormously to a proper Cup final atmosphere. In another 14 years or so Everton might be back, and a new generation of supporters will doubtless invest the occasion with all the hope and passion they can muster. Chelsea will be back on a more regular basis, unless, like Manchester United this season, they have more important matters to attend to. They will probably win a few more Cups, too. Because they must. And they wonder where the magic went ...
It's unofficial: United were robbed
A funny thing happened last week. An article I wrote for The Observer (that's an English Sunday newspaper, for all you bloggers around the world who cannot understand why a post relating to the Champions League final in Rome would appear three days after the event) received more than 250 replies, most of them favourable.
Though unusual – the favourable aspect, I mean; far too many of my correspondents write in to call me names – that was not the funny thing. The funny thing was that intertwined between all the admiration for Barcelona and acceptance that English football might not be quite as mighty as we all thought a couple of weeks ago, was a continuous thread from Manchester United followers quite clearly in denial. It was completely wrong of me, they argued, to form conclusions and make assumptions on the basis of a single game. United just had an off-night, that's all. A bad day at the office. Barcelona more or less got lucky to find the 2008 European champions so badly out of sorts. It is good for the game that the prize should occasionally visit the continent and all that, but normal service will soon be resumed.
Yet imagine the squawk if I had written an article along those lines. Imagine covering a boxing match, or one of the golfing majors, on the basis that not so much should be read into the result because the losers would probably do better on another occasion. I don't think even the Manchester United website would be prepared to be quite so partisan, but in the spirit of end-of-season jollity I am prepared to have a go. Here is the inquest on events in Rome that a number of Manchester United fans seem to have been expecting:
"Manchester United were desperately unlucky in Rome to find that all 11 of their players suffered a loss of form at exactly the same moment, around nine minutes into the game. In a further unhelpful turn of events, Barcelona had clearly been practising and turned up with three brilliant players and eight more pretty useful ones. This sort of unexpected upset can occur from time to time in football matches played over 90 minutes, that's why United were doubly unfortunate to have met Barcelona in the final rather than a game played over two legs.
"In all probability Andrés Iniesta, Xavi Hernández and Lionel Messi will never play as well again, they were just jammy enough to all find their best ever form in the most important game of the season. That's tantamount to cheating, really, when United were having to watch Rio Ferdinand being outjumped by a 5ft 6in centre forward who was supposed to be playing on the wing, but no team can be so unlucky twice. There is no doubt who is really the best team in the world. United will be back next season with all guns blazing. At least the ones that haven't joined Real Madrid."
There. Don't say I don't try to please everyone. That's all for now. Kazakhstan awaits.
