Coach Confidential

When sports bosses hire, they go to dramatic lengths to ensure secrecy. Like undercover agents, as Carlo Ancelotti says.

When sports bosses hire, they go to dramatic lengths to ensure secrecy. Like undercover agents, as Carlo Ancelotti says.

The Chelsea football club recently named Ancelotti as their coach. But his wooing started months ago, with intrigue and style. The cinema-loving Italian, who played cameos in a few films, enjoyed every minute of it. In mid-2008, Ancelotti, who then managed AC Milan, sneaked out to Paris to meet Roman Abramovich, Chelsea’s deceptively unkempt owner. Abramovich waited at George V hotel, while a limousine fetched Ancelotti. ‘The manager of Milan is on a secret mission,’ Ancelotti writes in Preferisco la Coppa, his recent autobiography. ‘I, like 007, on my own. Sat behind a driver with the face of a killer.’ If a film were to be made on the teaming up of Ancelotti and Stamford Bridge Blues, Roubles are Forever would be an apt title.

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