Never an easy team to like, Chelsea. For all but the most devoted, in a match between Chelsea and the Iranian Secret Police it would be a tough one who to support: well, maybe not. Come on you Muhabarat. But something strange is going on in west London: Roman’s centurions are becoming admirable, even likeable. As much as anything, that’s down to one engaging guy, their manager, Carlo Ancelotti. After last weekend’s defeat at Anfield, he didn’t blame anybody, he didn’t moan about his players (hello, Arsène), he just gave fulsome praise to Fernando Torres and the Liverpool defence who stood up to a major second-half battering.
Never an easy team to like, Chelsea. For all but the most devoted, in a match between Chelsea and the Iranian Secret Police it would be a tough one who to support: well, maybe not. Come on you Muhabarat. But something strange is going on in west London: Roman’s centurions are becoming admirable, even likeable. As much as anything, that’s down to one engaging guy, their manager, Carlo Ancelotti. After last weekend’s defeat at Anfield, he didn’t blame anybody, he didn’t moan about his players (hello, Arsène), he just gave fulsome praise to Fernando Torres and the Liverpool defence who stood up to a major second-half battering.
If you want to get a feel for the real Ancelotti, try his autobiography, The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius, which is unlike any other footballing book I’ve come across. The money from it goes to a foundation to find a cure for motor neurone disease, which has afflicted Ancelotti’s old playing colleague from Serie A, Stefano Borgonovo. Now, writes Ancelotti, Stefano, who talks through a computer voice, ‘speaks with his eyes, literally. He moves his eyes to pick out letters, forming words and phrases and sentences.
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