Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee
Little Jackie Piper loved that rascal Puff
And brought him strings, and sealing wax, and other fancy stuff
Oh, Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist, in a land called Honah Lee
Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist, in a land called Honah Lee
Puff The Magic Dragon: Peter, Paul and Mary: Songwriters: Robin Spielberg, Leonard Lipton, Peter Yarrow
There is for some unfathomable reason among a large section of Everton supporters a myth that Carlo Ancelotti was some great wizard at Everton Football Club. A magical football winning Merlin no less. The man had only just walked through the Goodison Park doors, practically taken his first training session at Finch Farm and the, in my opinion awful, “Carlo Fantastico, Carlo Magnifico” song was born. Criticise all the managers which the clown of an owner has brought to the club, but not Teflon Carlo, he is untouchable. This is not to denigrate Ancelotti’s highly successful career, but he was not some dream which fleetingly passed before blue’s eyes bestowing a short period of football nirvana. In reality Ancelotti did nothing special at Everton Football Club. By the end of his reign the rot of the present relegation struggles had intensified. This reality was there for anyone with open royal blue eyes to see.
I actually wrote an article on Ancelotti’s appointment “Stars In His Eyes” which, before I started writing my own blog, I posted on Toffee Web. In the article I said Ancelotti was not the person to take the blues forward. I think I was proved one hundred per cent right. (Stars In His Eyes: https://www.toffeeweb.com/season/19-20/comment/fanscomment/38975.html
Ancelotti, great manager as he is, had actually failed in his two previous managerial posts before rocking up at Finch Farm. Succeeding Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich he won a Bundesliga title. This was with a Bayern side so far ahead of the rest of the league, he was practically handed the Bundesliga title on a platter. The Bayern hierarchy had brought Ancelotti to the Allianz Arena for one thing only. Not to win another Bundesliga title, which at the time Bayern could do in their sleep. It was for his track record as a Champions League winner. He was at Bayern for one reason only, to do what Guardiola had failed to do, win the Champions League. Knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid in his first season, as well as the German DFB Pokal by Borussia Dortmund, the Bundesliga title, which was not one of Bayern’s better league campaign wins, was his only triumph. The next season he got the boot from Bayern as early as September, with rumblings from the Bayern squad about his lackserdiscal training regime. His downfall followed a horrendous 3-0 Champions League group stage defeat by Paris Saint Germain.
At Napoli his next port of call he did not fare any better. He was sacked in his second season with the Gli Azzurri way off the pace, after finishing eleven points behind Juventus, in his first season at the Stadio San Paolo. (Now known as the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium. Named after the greatest player ever to grace the planet. The scorer of the two greatest goals ever for Argentina in the 1986 World Cup quarter final win. Up the Albiceleste).
Ancelotti great manager in his time was living on past glories when he took the Monaco based clown’s riches. Around £11 million a year on a four and a half year contract. No compensation requirement if he moved to a certain number of named clubs, highlighting just how dysfunctional the leadership at Everton Football Club is. No compensation for God’s sake!! His previous two jobs had not gone well, but let’s not quibble over that was Moshiri’s mantra, as it was the boards. As for the Director of Football (DOF) well that’s a different story.
Some argue Ancelotti showed he is great manager by winning a Champions League and La Liga double in his first season back at Real Madrid. These triumphs coming after the rat defected back to one of his former employers, at the end of the awful Covid-19 season at Everton. Yes, Ancelotti did well last season at the Santiago Bernabéu no one can argue different. But there were a few caveats. It was in a season where Athletic Madrid were beginning the end game of the Diego Simeone era, which concludes this summer. Barcelona meanwhile was a financial basket case of a club, probably third only to our beloved blues and Indipendiante. They were a team in disarray with a rookie manager in his first season. The football stars were in fact aligned for Ancelotti. Got to give him credit he took advantage of the situation.
Did Ancelotti get lucky in the Champions League against both Manchester City and Chelsea last season, yes, he did. Madrid coming back from the dead in both ties where great achievements, but luck played a part in my opinion. But that can happen in cup competitions. Thank God he went on to win the final though!! What the Champions League win did highlight was Ancelotti is a man manager of top class, and world class players. He can get the best out of such players with his light touch management. His “Quiet leadership.” That is why he has such a stella cup record. When it comes to the slog of a league campaign his career credentials are not as good as you may think. Long campaigns are not as much to his liking.
Last season was a Ranieri Leicester City moment for Ancelotti. A good manager past his peak who got lucky for one season were all the football stars aligned. Real with all their super star talent have been way off the pace in La Liga this season. Barcelona have won the league at a canter if truth be told. Meanwhile he looked lost and quite frankly out of his depth as Mancherster City destroyed Real in the Champions League semi-final. “Magnifico” will probably get the boot at the end of the season. One Copa del Rey, plus the baubles of the Spanish Super Cup and World Club Championship will not save him in my opinion.. It certainly is not good enougth for the Real Madrid hierarchy.
Which brings us back to Everton Football Club. Carlo Ancelotti was and always will be a man who knows how to get on well with super star players. From Juventus to Real Madrid. From Bayern Munich to AC Milan. From PSG to Chelsea. This is the milieu which Ancelotti operates in. He even called his own book “Quiet Leadership.” Well, that is maybe all that is needed when working with a certain sort of high quality player. Even so Ancelotti has been proved to be a cup winner more than a league winner, where his record of title wins is nowhere near his success as a cup winning manager. Everton were getting a manager who in my opinion, even counting last season’s success with Real Madrid, was/is on the decline in his managerial career. Something I had pointed out in “Stars in His Eyes.” But more pertinent he was a manager totally unsuited to a club like Everton. No world class footballers for “Magnifico” to have a quiet word with at Finch Farm. This was to be a project pf building a team to compete in a league campaign basically from scratch, from a mixture of mediocre to awful players. With one or two exceptions, Richarlison, Pickford and an on form Calvert-Lewin. Not something Carlo was use to.
But the Mr “Hollywood of the North” clown, the “We do not want to be a museum” poisonous owner Farhad Moshiri came bumbling in when it came to “Magnifico.” When it came to a choice between “Magnifico” or Mikhail Arteta, who was the other firm candidate in the frame for the Goodison Park hot seat, there was only one answer in the virus owner’s mind. Arteta was the man recommended by the then Director of Football (DOF) Marcel Brands. You know a young progressive manager who would work with and bring on young hungry players. All the buzz words which Everton had been paying lip service to for season after season, without doing anything of the sort. A chance to really put such a plan in place stood in front of Moshiri and co in the shape of Mikel Arteta, a former blue. But oh no, not when we can get Ancelotti! Never mind if he was the right fit or not to manager Everton Football Club. You can just imagine the clown Moshiri sitting in his Monaco mansion muttering to himself
“What does that idiot of a DOF know! Ha ha Arteta. I can get Ancelotti. I have a God. I will have the Manager King of the North West and beyond!! World stars will beg to join the Goodison bandwagon and work under the football God. World dominance is in our reach. Really must get him down for the weekend on my yacht!!”
The ridiculous glorifying of Ancelotti, not just from Moshiri and the Everton board, but from the Everton supporter base, plus the gushing over him from podcast after podcast, and I mean podcast after podcast!! took me aback. His “Quiet Leadership” book was up there with the Bible, the Koran and the collected works of Lenin all of a sudden in the eyes of most blues. A must read page turner! A must read for every blue on the planet!! Had no one actually followed what he had done, which is fail, in his previous two jobs? Did any of them at any time question if “Carlo Magnifico” was anywhere near the sort of manager suited to a mid-table (and I’m being kind here), Premier League outfit.? No, they never. It was gush after gush, swoon after swoon, drunk on the nectar of the “Great Carlo”. Kneel and bow to “Mr Fantastico. Look he can even be seen on Crosby beach and goes shopping at Bootle Strand”. How people fall for these sort of PR stunts always baffles me. You know the sort of stuff, “Clueless Frank, he gets us.” The ultimate for me was “Look at Mr cool” as he drank a cup of tea during the chaotic Everton v Tottenham FA Cup 5th round clash at Goodison Park. In reality he could drink his tea as he had no control of the game and practically did not know what was going on. To be fair José Mourinho in the opposite dug out had no control either. Before you knew it there were tee shirts and posters of this tea drinking “iconic” image!! I think I was a lone voice in the wilderness arguing against Ancelotti’s appointment and questioning if he was any sort of the right managerial fit for the toffees.
In the half season Ancelotti had when joining the blues, replacing the sacked Marco Silva, he moved the toffees up the Premier League table, (still think Silva would have as well). But it was a middling half season, (29 points from 19 games), with some horrendous performances. Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea away being stand outs. Little did I know when leaving Stamford Bridge after a nightmare performance from the toffees, it would be well over a year before I would be able to go and watch the blues play again.
Most soul destroying of all was the FA Cup third round defeat over at the great Satan’s sandpit. The so called “Magnifico” saw fit to subject the blues to the biggest humiliation ever against the evil ones. “Mr Fantastico” could not even win against a bunch of pre school kids which Mr million teeth fielded that day. I have seen plenty of disgraceful, horrible, horrendous, humiliations against that lot. But that defeat is an open wound which will never heal. I am scarred for life from it. An absolute nightmare, horrendous, a disgrace, a humiliation, sickening and add whatever other adjective you like!! How “Magnifico” got away so lightly with that ginormous catastrophe is a mystery. His spell over the supporter base really was a good one!!
The real Ancelotti who will never be suited to managing average at best players, was to come to the fore in the, lest we forget, “Magnifico’s” one and only full season with the blues. Bringing in players such as Allan and Abdoulaye Doucouré both for around £20 million each during the summer transfer window. Being the financial basket case of a club which the blues are, paying such money for competent midfielders at best, both at the upper end of their twenties, was not exactly the sort of player profile the blues should have been looking for. Allan of course was a trusted deputy of Ancelotti during his Napoli days. But it was the bringing in of Ancelotti’s pet player James Rodríguez which summed up both the sort of manager Ancelotti is, and also the absolute madness of the owner, board and the still profligate spending at Everton Football Club.
James Rodriguez may have been a free transfer, but his wages soon made up for that!! This was a player who had never lived up to the hype which surrounded him after his, it has to be said great World Cup for Colombia in 2014. He was also a player who had quite a bit of an injury record. But never mind that. Ancelotti wanted his pet player, so the Monaco based brainless idiot and the Everton board say “No problem. Director of Football, oh never mind what he thinks.” The club were in thrall to “Magnifico” and what they saw in their own deluded minds as a world class player!! The ridiculous posting of the image of Rodrigues in Bogota and Times Square sums up the clown of an owner and the Everton board. The rest of the Premier League having a good old giggle at that stunt. I know I found it embarrassing. As for the much touted young progressive manager dream, with young hungry players’ model. Well, that can all be dumped. (In fairness it has never got off the ground ever since the poisonous Moshiri showed up seven years ago. He had a slight dabble with Marco Silva but panicked at the first sign of trouble. As for “Clueless Frank” well!!). It was “We have God’s gift to football. What he wants he gets.”
Rodriguez posted a respectable six goals and four assist in his 23 League games for the toffees. But when you knock off those two August home games at the beginning of the season against West Bromwich Albion and Brighton and Hove Albion his stats don’t look as good as first sight. Three goals and two assists in those two early games. Well, he is practically posted half of his stats in two games!! Rodríguez was a player who was nothing but an expensive pet toy for Ancelotti. A player who also likes to put in a few good early season performances and then, that’s it practically for the rest of the season. Half the time he could not be bothered to declare himself fit for the blues, and on many occasions could not be bothered to put in even half of a shift. Southampton away and Fulham and Newcastle United at home were three particular shocking performances. The Allan, Doucoure and Rodríguez transfers were down to Ancelotti. Could better have been found, damn right!! Also brought in during the summer were Ben Godfrey and Niels Nkonkou, Brands signings, and Robin Olsen, who came in on loan from Roma to play his part in Ancelotti’s idiosyncratic idea of changing goalkeepers whenever the idea struck him!
Everton had a squad which was bang average and on the decline. Ancelotti’s reinforcements did not enhance the team but added to this pool of crap. It was a squad which many thought quite good, (very strange), and being managed by a magical wizard, as Everton were challenging in the top four after a 0-1 win at Sheffield United on Boxing Day. But in a season with no supporters in stadiums due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the world of football was turned upside down. Especially with away wins, which became some sort of speciality for the blues during the season. See: Baby Steps On A Mentality Highway: https://bagfulloftoffees737918539.wordpress.com/2023/03/21/baby-steps-on-a-mentality-highway/)
During the 2020-21 season the blues turned around their usual pathetic away form with eleven wins on the road plus four draws. But at home it was a different story under “Magnifico,” just six wins and four draws at home. The away wins were not due to some magical Ancelotti away spell. It was simply down to Covid-19. No supporters in the stadiums saw away wins significantly increase, in whichever league, from whichever country you may pick.
See the excellent article: Home advantage during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analyses of European football leagues
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8422080/
The same away day soft touch mentality soon came back to haunt the toffees, (and don’t we all know it!!), the following season when supporters returned. Meanwhile at home the blues saw fit to post some awful defeats. If “Magnifico” was such a great fit for the toffees then this would not have happened. He should have been able to overcome the no home support cloud which hung over the blues, especially in the second half of the season. But he failed miserably on this score.
To give Ancelotti credit, he did have a good half season with the blues up until New Years Day when West Ham United turned up at Goodison Park. But this was with a simple tactic which relied on a very low block. By New Year’s Day teams had worked the blues out and “Magnifico” had no answer. In reality Everton were a bad team, which started well in a very warped covid-season. Reality hit home by the half way stage of the season. This is where the real Everton showed up and “Magnifico” was out of his comfort zone. “This is not managing PSG, AC Milan or Chelsea Carlo. This is mainly bang average to crap players. Sprinkle your star dust on that.”
An awful game on New Year’s Day saw Everton slip to a 0-1 home defeat to West Ham United and that was only the beginning. Newcastle United, Fulham, Sheffield United, Burnley all taking three points with ease from Goodison Park as the blues put in some absolutely shambolic performances. The “Carlo Magnifico” banner draped across the empty Park End looking increasingly ridiculous as these performances piled up. By the last game of the season, some supporters still harboured some wild Europa Conference League hopes, I was saying we look more like a relegation candidate primed for next season. The 5-0 thrashing at Manchester City confirmed that. Meanwhile while that game was being played, Rodriguez was on a private jet flying back to Colombia and posing for photos at the same time!! Dereliction of duty of the highest order. The man was a part time footballer for the blues, and is man who like Dele Alli, and Ross Barkley gave up on actually bothering a long, long time ago.
The plain truth is that Carlo Ancelotti did nothing special at Everton Football Club. He got the blues to mid table, which I think we would all take at this moment in time!! What he did do was leave the blues a team which was ripe to struggle against relegation the following season. Ancelotti knew he was out of his comfort zone of “Quiet Leadership” with world class players. When it came to building a project at a struggling club, with mainly at best bang average players, he could not hack it. This is not to denigrate Ancelotti’s record as a manager, but that has only shown up at a certain high quality level, were Ancelotti excels. (Bayern and Napoli being exceptions). Further down the football food chain he is out of his depth as the Everton experiment showed. He got the blues to mid table fine, but he left a squad, which under him looked and reeked of being relegation candidates for the coming seasons. This is his legacy at Everton Football Club
Everton Football Club have been on a seven-year journey to the Championship ever since the Monaco based virus known as Farhad Moshiri bought into the club. But the final six months of “Magnifico’s” reign saw the blues accelerate their headlong rush to disaster. Meanwhile the rat, a better description than “Magnifico or Fantastico,” defected to Real Madrid and the milieu where he is at home. “Can’t sully my record any more with that lot.” Disastrous appointments of the red Satan and then “Clueless Frank” saw the relegation acceleration move to “warp speed” as Captain Kirk would say. You can thank the virus owner and the Everton board for that! We now have Sean “The Ginger Cat” Dyche picking up the pieces. Is he the long term answer, no he is not, but let’s all hope he can get us over the Premier League safety line.
Carlo Ancelotti was always a ridiculous appointment for Everton Football Club. He was not a manager who would come in and build a club up from the depths of despair. He was no project builder. He was no Merlin the Magician come to save the blues. The reality is he was a great manager who was totally unsuited to the Goodison gig. But was very happy with the reported £11 million a year salary. This idiotic appointment was down to the cancerous owner and the Everton board who totally ignored Marcel Brands advice to appointment Mikel Arteta.
Carlo Ancelotti has a stella record working with high class players, especially when it comes to cup competitions. But he was totally unsuited to the rebuilding project which was needed at Goodison Park, and is still needed. Carlo Ancelotti was no “Magnifico” at Goodison Park. He was no “Fantastico” at Goodison Park. He was no “God’s gift to the toffees.” The blue tinted glasses and the myth of what he did at Goodison still staggers me. He did nothing special, but he did in his last six months accelerate the course for the next two seasons of relegation struggles. He may well be a great manager in a certain environment. But Everton Football Club was never his sort of environment. The eulogising of his time at Everton Football Club is a universal mystery which needs debunking.
You’ll see green alligators and long-necked geese
Some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees
Some cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you’re born
You’re never gonna see no unicorn
The Unicorn: Irish Rovers: Songwriter Shel Silverstein
TOFFEE FOR TEA 