In a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro, two aspiring young managers sit around a table. Their respective clubs, Flamengo and Botafogo, are fierce rivals on the pitch. The relationship between the managers of the two clubs, Filipe Luís and Davide Ancelotti, however, is significantly more cordial.
Speaking before his first meeting with Ancelotti in Ligue 1 on Sunday, the Monaco manager, Filipe Luís, described his counterpart at Lille as a “really formidable person”. The Brazilian added: “It is something special for us. It will be a pleasure to face my friend.” There were 12 managerial appointments in Ligue 1 over the summer; Filipe Luís and Ancelotti were two of the most interesting.
Filipe Luís won the Premier League with Chelsea but is probably best known in Europe for his eight years at Atlético Madrid, where he won La Liga, the Copa del Rey and two Europa League titles across two spells. He carried on that success in his first job as a manager, winning the Copa Libertadores with Flamengo. When your surname is Ancelotti, you can’t exactly make a name for yourself; his father, Carlo, has already seen to that.
No manager has won more titles (five) or as many games (218) in the competition as his father. Bar a brief 33-game stint as manager at Botafogo, Davide has spent the last 14 years following his father from club to club and then ultimately to the Brazil national team. From the banks of the river Mersey, to Bavaria, the fervour of the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, the grandeur of the Bernabéu and the vibrancy of the Maracanã.
His trip around the world was enriching but he was always in the shadows. Ancelotti’s appointment over the summer marked a radical departure at Lille. There was a common thread linking the club’s appointments of Christophe Galtier, Jocelyn Gourvennec, Paulo Fonseca and Bruno Génésio: they were all “a safe pair of hands” and most had considerable experience in Ligue 1.
Génésio left Lille in the summer after his contract expired even though he had met the club’s key objective of qualifying for this season’s Champions League. The club’s president, Olivier Létang, simply said it “was the right moment” for a parting of the ways. Unlike the wider public, Létang was at least familiar with Davide Ancelotti thanks to their time together at Paris Saint-Germain in 2012.
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