Carlo Ancelotti's Firing a Strike Against Complacency Threatening Bayern Munich's Reign

Overreaction or an indication of wider discontent? Bayern Munich is moving on after firing veteran manager Carlo Ancelotti.

Jonathan Wilson | Sep 28, 2017

Carlo Ancelotti's Firing a Strike Against Complacency Threatening Bayern Munich's Reign /

From the outside, it doesn’t look like much of a crisis, but this is Bayern Munich, and at a modern superclub what appears to be a gentle blip can feel on the inside like a seismic convulsion.

Carlo Ancelotti was sacked on Thursday in response to Wednesday’s 3-0 defeat at Paris Saint-Germain, but in truth the discontent has been building for some time.

Bayern was abject in Paris: slow, sluggish and disorganized. Under Pep Guardiola, there were many at the club–players and other staff–who complained of how intense everything was all the time. Ancelotti was initially welcomed as a slackening of the reins. Everybody at Saberner Strasse, it seemed, breathed a little more easily. But after a time it became apparent that this wasn’t Ancelotti giving his players a break, it was just how he was: relaxed to the point of decadence.

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Of course, Ancelotti still won the league title last season, but given Bayern’s financial advantages, plus the injury problems that undermined Borussia Dortmund, which should have been the closest challenger, it would have taken some effort not to. This season, Bayern has already lost at Hoffenheim (where it also lost last season), and let a two-goal lead slip to draw against Wolfsburg. It sits third in the table, three points behind the early leader Dortmund. At this same stage of Guardiola’s second season, Bayern had only one more point. In the Champions League, Bayern had begun with a 3-0 win over Anderlecht. In no normal sense of the term is this a crisis.

But these are not normal circumstances. Such are the financial imbalances in German football that Bayern no longer asks itself whether it will win. What matters is how it wins. It’s legitimate to point out that for Guardiola to win three Bundesliga titles in itself means little about his status as one of the greatest coaches of all time. What’s less legitimate is to pretend that the style with which he did it doesn’t deserve respect. Bayern has won five Bundesliga titles in a row. In terms of how it was won, last season’s was the least of those successes.

In that sense, what happened in Paris was the confirmation of a worrying trend. The mood at Bayern has been turning against Ancelotti for several months now. Under Guardiola, Bayern could realistically argue it was at or at least somewhere near the cutting edge of the game. Since he was a player at Milan, Ancelotti has never been near the tactical vanguard.

Soccer Managers: When they were players

Antonio Conte, Chelsea

Antonio Conte celebrates a goal for Juventus against Rangers in the Champions League in 1995.

Carlo Ancelotti, Bayern Munich

AC Milan's Carlo Ancelotti, right, goes head-to-head with Napoli's Diego Maradona when both played in Italy in October 1990.

Diego Simeone, Atletico Madrid

Argentina's Diego Simeone shakes hands with England's David Beckham after their match at the 2002 World Cup, four years after Beckham was sent off for kicking out at Simeone.

Diego Simeone, Atletico Madrid

Diego Simeone celebrates scoring a goal for Lazio against Vicenza in a Serie A match in April 2001.

Jurgen Klinsmann, U.S. men's national team

Jurgen Klinsmann celebrates after scoring Germany's lone goal in a 1-0 win over Bolivia in a 1994 World Cup match in Chicago.

Jurgen Klinsmann, U.S. men's national team

Jurgen Klinsmann celebrates after scoring the first Stuttgart goal in the 1989 UEFA Cup final second leg against Napoli in May 1989.

Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp, right, makes a play on the ball while playing for Mainz against St. Pauli in 1999.

Luis Enrique, Barcelona

Luis Enrique scores for Barcelona against Arsenal in the group stage of the Champions League in October 1999 at Wembley Stadium.

Mauricio Pochettino, Tottenham

Argentina's Mauricio Pochettino takes down Engand's Ashley Cole in the group stage of the 2002 World Cup in Japan.

Joachim Low, Germany

Joachim Low, playing for Karlsruher against Werder Bremen in a November 1984 Bundesliga match.

Patrick Vieira, New York City FC

While starring at Arsenal, Patrick Vieira goes head-to-head with a young Cristiano Ronaldo in the Gunners' win over Manchester United in the 2005 FA Cup final.

Pep Guardiola, Manchester City

Pep Guardiola mans the midfield for Barcelona in a February 2001 match against Athletic Bilbao.

Pep Guardiola, Manchester City; Zinedine Zidane, Real Madrid

Pep Guardiola stands side-by-side with Zinedine Zidane in a Euro 2000 quarterfinal between Spain and France.

Zinedine Zidane, Real Madrid

Zinedine Zidane escapes away from Michael Ballack in Real Madrid's 2002 Champions League final triumph over Bayer Leverkusen, in which Zidane scored the winning goal.

Zinedine Zidane, Real Madrid

Zinedine Zidane led the European All-Stars, while Brazil's Ronaldo led the World All-Stars in a star-studded match in France prior to the 1998 World Cup draw.

Didier Deschamps, France

Didier Deschamps lifts the Champions League trophy with Marseille after captaining the squad to a triumph over AC Milan in 1993.

Ronald Koeman, Everton

Ronald Koeman, front, celebrates after scoring the winning goal in the 1992 European Cup final for Barcelona against Sampdoria at Wembley Stadium.

Andriy Shevchenko, Ukraine

AC Milan's Andriy Shevchenko, right, is mobbed by Clarence Seedorf and Kaka after a goal against city rival Inter Milan at the San Siro in 2004.

Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that, it’s just that Bayern needs more than to win. Last season was only the fourth league title of Ancelotti’s career, a remarkable figure given he has spent two decades managing the biggest clubs in Europe. He’s the Real Madrid manager who finished behind Atletico; the PSG manager who finished behind Montpellier. And yet he’s also one of only two managers to win the European Cup/Champions League three times.

That apparent contradiction, though, is readily explained. Ancelotti is an astute politician, good at managing upwards, good at juggling the ego of players, but he lacks the hunger and the fire to drive players through a league season, to get them giving their all every week, every game. The nature of the modern Champions League is that if you’re rich enough, you’ll get to the quarterfinals, and, in the years without an outstanding team, it them becomes essentially a game of pass the parcel among the elite. The absence of that relentless fury, of course, is probably why he is more clubbable than most managers, more easily relatable, nicer even.

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“What we’ve seen tonight was not Bayern Munich," the club’s CEO, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, said after the defeat in Paris, but it may be that Ancelotti fulfills the role of useful scapegoat. When Robert Lewandowski earlier in the month complained about the lack of big-name signings, he was highlighting what is obvious: Bayern, despite its vast wealth, is not competing for the brightest talent. There has been a preference for weakening Bundesliga rivals by snapping up its best talent, guaranteeing domestic titles without making progress against the European elite.

The Bundesliga, generally, is having a poor season in European terms, so bad that it’s slipped from second to fourth in the UEFA coefficient table. This, perhaps, is the consequence of the league’s financial imbalances: once the majority of teams cannot compete, the one at the top isn’t challenged and inevitably slides back.

Sacking Ancelotti is a strike against that built-in complacency. It’s a message to players and beyond that the standards of this season are not acceptable, even if Bayern is still likely to win the league, still likely to progress to the last 16–and perhaps beyond–of the Champions League. Players who grumbled about Guardiola’s intensity have grumbled even more about Ancelotti’s lack of it. Sacking the manager answers their complaints but is also a challenge to them. But if Bayern is to be a serious challenger for the Champions League again, if it is to drag itself once more into the very forefront of the European elite, there will also have to be improvements at the boardroom level. There may even have to be a recognition that German football, with its present economic model, is damaging itself.

Published Sep 28, 2017

JONATHAN WILSON

An accomplished author of multiple books, Jonathan Wilson is one of the world’s preeminent minds on soccer tactics and history.