Tense nerves with Carlo Ancelotti, Gennaro Gattuso shuts down controversy

“From my side there is great respect for Carlo.”

Together, as the Real Madrid coach himself recalled, they won two Champions Leagues, establishing a relationship that went beyond a normal harmony between a coach and a player. Then, at the time of the turnover on the Napoli bench – it was December 2019 when Gattuso took Ancelotti’s place at the helm of the Azzurri – something began to crack. From there, relations would become colder, as admitted by the Merengue club’s coach himself.

“Together with Gattuso we lived very good moments, we won two Champions, they were years and situations that I will always remember. Then … the relationship does not always continue to be good, we had some problems and I don’t want to talk about them because they are personal things,” Ancelotti pressed in the press conference on the eve of the Spanish Super Cup semifinal that will see Valencia and Real Madrid take on each other in the King Fahd Stadium theater in Riyadh.

The coach from Corigliano Calabro returned to the subject in his meeting with journalists, nipping in the bud any possible speculation about the alleged bad relations between the two: “These are not personal issues. He was coaching Napoli, since December I started working there and the press and TV started saying that the team was physically sick. The problem was generated because of that, but on my part for Carlo there is great respect. There was a problem with work, but I have won so much with him and he is the best coach in the world. For my part personally on a human and football level there is a lot of esteem,” Gattuso concluded.