There is power and authority in being calm and measured, in building trust and making decisions coolly, in using influence and persuasion and in being professional in your approach. When you watch Vito Corleone in The Godfather, do you see a weak, quiet man or do you see a calm, powerful man in charge of the situation?
My approach is born of the idea that a leader should not need to rant or rave or rule with an iron fist, but rather that their power should be implicit. It should be crystal clear who is in charge, and their authority must result from respect and trust rather than fear. I believe that I have earned the the respect I am shown, partly through a successful career delivering trophies for my clubs, but perhaps more importantly because of the fact that I respect those I work with. These people trust me to do the right thing, just as I trust them with their roles in the organization.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. To get people to work hard for you, you need to show them you want them to achieve career success for their sake. There are clear echoes of Jim Collins’s ‘Level 5’ leaders who, Collins argues in his classic Good to Great, possess the paradoxical mix of ambition and humility. These leaders are highly ambitious, but the focus of their ambition is not themselves; it is on those who will deliver success (employees and players), and they also feel no need to inflate their own egos.
Everybody has the will to win but only the best have the will to prepare to win.
During those first seven games I thought that I would not make it as a coach. I was worried that maybe this wasn’t the right profession for me. There was too much pressure. Most of this pressure, I was putting on myself, as it was at the beginning of my career and I knew how important this first job was if I was going to be successful.
This is the way at the big clubs. You have to wait for you chance and then take it. And, when you do take it, you have to know that you will always be challenged. There is no room for complacency at a big club and it is important for the players to know that, if they do well when they get the chance, they will get their opportunity in the team.
Now, you have to go home and write in your diary that you trained with Zlatan today, because I think it could be the last time that you do.
Yes, he’s a striker, but he cannot make the difference. There are only three players who could make the difference: Ibra, Messi and Ronaldo.
If you have to sack people then sack them - don’t tell them that if they lose or do a bad job you’re going to sack them. If I don’t do a good job then just fire me, but don’t give me stupid ultimatums. You are the boss, so of course you have the right to sack whoever you want - just be a man about it.
I’d always prefer losing my job not to be dragged out. I’ve learnt that getting sacked - and getting recruited, for that matter - is rarely just about you. It is always about the person hiring or firing you. Do your job to be the best of your ability and let others judge you because they will anyway.
Ronaldo is what I call a ‘technical leader’, who leads by example; he doesn’t speak a lot but is serious, very professional and takes of himself. He is a good guy. Ramos is what I call a ‘personality leader’, a leader with strong character, who is never scared, never worried - always positive. Pepe is a fantastic and serious player. His energy and drive are infectious. Reference the leaders because they are the ones who will help your career.
Find a solution, don’t waste time looking for the guilty.
You get a very short honeymoon period when you start a new job - make it count.
Respect is everything. It is a daily currency that can go up and down in direct relation to your behaviour and choices. Take it seriously.
Don’t always be obsessed with drawing loyalty from the people with whom you work. Aim to inspire greater performance in the moment and focus on showing that you really care about them as people and their professional growth.
Mutual trust comes as the final piece of the relationship pyramid but demonstrate you can be trusted from day one of your relationship with their talent.
The waiters at Milanello are mostly very old - they too have been there a long time - and the atmosphere is very easy. When I started to work on the organization and setup at PSG, introducing a restaurant was one of my first priorities. I knew from my time in Milan how important it was for the players to have meals together, to help form a tighter unit. I wanted to bring the family environment I knew so well from Milan to Paris, and mealtimes are an important part of family life. This is how I like the culture of the club to be and I consider the family atmosphere fundamental to success.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
The president latched on to the stats and said we were not working hard enough. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t the amount of training but rather the intensity that was important; we could train three hours slowly, but it’s better to train thirty minutes fast and hard.
When you lose, of course you have to analyse what went wrong and how to address it next time, but you have to put that game behind you. You have to try to forget the defeat as soon as possible so you’re in the right frame of mind for the next game. It is at times like this that the president and the press will begin to say, ‘You’re to weak, you’re too nice. The players aren’t performing so you have to show them the whip.’ Every time we lose, that’s what they say. It is normal in football and part of the deal you must make with yourself before you take the job. You have to let it wash over you and be confident in your own approach.
My opinion is that players do their best when they are comfortable, not when they are uncomfortable.
When I talk of players being comfortable, I do not mean in their playing - I mean in their minds. They must understand that I am always trying to make them and the team better. The comfort is in the trust built by the relationship. In the end, everyone has to respect the rules and that enables a friendly relationship to exist, even if my decision is that the player has to go on the bench. On one such occasion, when I left a player out of the team, he said to me, ‘But we are friends.’
‘Yes, of course we’re friends,’ I explained, ‘and for that reason, you can see why you don’t play - because we’re friends and I can be honest with you. You must be treated the same as any other player.’
He treats the players with great respect, but only if he gets that respect in return.
Now he’s gone you’ll recognize how good he was.
Of course, I could make new, explicit rules. I have that power, in theory. I could tell the players, ‘We now train at seven in the morning,’ but this is not the right way. This is just to show power. It is always best to use soft power, quiet power with the players, to influence and have them follow the implicit rules because they believe in them.
There are times when it is important to use both implicit and explicit rules. I hope all the players who play for me knwo my non-negotiables and my most important rule is to train properly - always give 100 per cent in training. You need to know this if you want to play for me. I cannot allow you just to learn from the others - this takes too long. I have to tell you, then the others will constantly reinforce. They will explain when you are crossing the line. ‘The boss won’t like that,’ they’ll say.
This is the law of the dressing room - everyone the same, no special privileges. Everyone must be professional. I brought Drogba on as a substitute in the match and he scored our second - and what would become decisive - goal. There were no hard feelings between us as he produced the perfect response to being dropped from the team.
Sometimes these incidents go beyond being mere testing and become unacceptable. The players must know where the line is, as you cannot expect people to accept the rules if they don’t know what they are. You must communicate these early in the relationship. There are a lot of things that cannot be tolerated - continually arriving late to training is one and being disrespectful of teammates another. If you’re disrespectful to my staff, then that’s it. That’s unacceptable.
These non-negotiables are about behaviour, and only behaviour. They are not about mistakes on the pitch.
Your responsibility as a leader is to those you lead.
Influence beats coercion.
Being able to pick that whole group of players up, to run through brick walls, play through injuries - it’s a testament to Carlo. I’ve seen players play through injuries, taking injections to get them through it, when they shouldn’t really have been out there at all, because they wanted to perform for Carlo Ancelotti. In all of my time as a player, I know that, once you strip everything back, it comes down to this: you go that extra mile for people who care about you as a person.
Take the true greats - the likes of Maradona, Pele, Cruyff. If you were to watch a film of them playing and pause it just before they made their pass, you could ask a hundred coaches where they should play the ball and they would all say the same thing: ‘It should go there.’ When you press play, the film will show the ball going exactly there. Great players invariably play that ‘correct’ ball - they make the right decision. Naturally, everybody wants to score, but if somebody else is in a better position, they make the right decision to pass. It’s these decisions that, over the course of the match, decide who wins and loses.
Getting decisions right or wrong seems an easy thing to quantify, but I don’t believe it to be so. When the results of my decision prove not to be good, does that mean it was the wrong decision? No. It only means that it turned out to be wrong. When I make a decision I always think that it’s the right decision at the time, otherwise why would I take it? I have no regret because, with the information at my disposal, I did what I thought was best. I can’t change it. While it is important to look back and analyse where things have gone wrong, it is vital not to dwell unnecessarily on them. This will kill you.
I took a decision to put Inzaghi in the team and he scored two goals in the final. To me, this was the right decision, even if he hadn’t scored, because it was my decision. I am the one who must live with the decision, so I want it to be mine.
Anger is a natural reaction when things don’t go as we want, or when players don’t behave or perform as we would like. A leader must be careful about exhibiting anger. While it can be a useful too for some, for many it can result in a loss of control and professionalism, which will always be counter-productive. I am not someone who is angered easily. I find that remaining calm helps me understand and analyse a situation. Anger is instinctive, but you must try to control it intelligently, and only in that way can it be used effectively. I like to use it as a motivational tool. Despite myself, I get angry sometimes, of course. They players say I revert to speaking Italian when I go crazy.
The only thing that makes me angry is when the attitude of the team is not right. Not the performance - the attitude. The attitude is key, even if you’re winning. You cannot always control the result, but you can control your attitude, and this is why it makes me angry. On some days you might be able to have a bad attitude and win, or a good attitude and lose, but you’re going to win more games with the better attitude.
Even after that infamous night in Istanbul, in the CL final against Liverpool that we lost, it was not right to be angry because the attitude had been perfect. The quality of the game we played on that day was the best I’ve coached in a final. It is a prime example of how a manager can control almost all aspects of the game - strategy, tactics, motivation, the opposition team - but the only thing you cannot control is the final score. There is a randomness in football, in life, which you cannot eliminate from any analysis of the game. Over time, however, you can do everything in your power to eliminate as much of the noise in the system as possible.
The players that others refer to as the foot soldiers, the workhorses or the ‘water carriers’ - they are the ones to whom I’m closest. This kind of player has the character I value the most, because when I played, I had more or less the same skill, the same ability as they have.
The foot soldiers are the players who give their heart for the team - every time, in every game and training session - so I don’t need to spend a lot of time with these kind of players. They are the low-maintainance team members who allow you the time to spend on the high-maintenance ones. They self-motivate 100 per cent of the time.
I remember all these players as much as the superstars, because without them there are no superstars. It’s a cliche, but it really is a team game.
The first time I met Davids I told him, ‘I’m happy to be your manager because you are fantastic. You are strong and aggressive - you are always giving 100 per cent.’ He looked at me and said, ‘I am also a talented football player.’ I had made the classic mistake of assuming that great players do not work hard. These players are sometimes not recognized by the fans and the owners, but they are by those who lead them.
It is a common misperception that footballers are not intelligent. Nothing can be further from the truth: footballers may rarely be educated, but that does not preclude high levels of intelligence.
You know when you are rich because you don’t know exactly how much is in your bank account; my father knew to the exact penny what we had. We needed to be organized.
Mongardi was not an arrogant player. He didn’t use his power to bully the young players, and this was an important lesson for me. Maybe he was also empathetic because he had been in Serie A and come back down. He’d done it all and didn’t have anything to prove, so his ego was in the right place.
In Russian they say the boss is not always right but he is always the boss.
Because of his natural authority he would not even answer if you challenged him; he would simply pose a question back to you and you would know what he wanted you to do.
Communication is key here - it is the basis of every relationship. What you say, how you say it and when you say it. Everybody has their own character and their own style of communication. There are players who need to be stimulated and there are those who prefer to delegate, while other players are foot soldiers who just want to execute the orders. A manager has to take into consideration all these differences in personality and must listen to what each player thinks, because for players to give their all they have to be convinced about what they are doing.
Even in the short time that I was captain at Roma I started to realize the responsibility that came with being a leader. I began to understand that leading is not about how you see yourself, but how others see you. My responsibility was to be a role model. Every team has its rules, written or unwritten, and the first one who has to respect the rules is the captain.
I am still obsessive and it is still all about the game. For me, money is not so important as long as I have enough not to worry. Zlatan and I would often sit and talk about we got to where we are. We are both from poor backgrounds and find it difficult to believe we are wealthy enough not to worry. When I read that some managers insist on being the highest paid at the club - higher even than all the players - I am surprised.
I’ve never insisted on that. I’ve accepted that as a manager you can always find a player who earns more than you, because… let’s face it, the players are more important than you.
People have said to me, ‘Why would you pay a player more than you earn?’ For me, money is not the key driver; success drives me. So it’s simple. If I am to be successful then I need the best players, and if the best players cost more than I do, I want them playing for me. I’m actually being selfish, not nice.
With all the demands on my time - to deal with the players, the game, the people at the club, the media, the latest developments and the opposition - and the pressures in the game - to get results, play attractive football and keep my job - there is a lot, you might imagine, to keep me up at night. Earlier in my career it was true: I would stay awake agonizing over decisions - that’s my obsessive nature again. But now I’m able to switch off well.
Experience helps, of course, and it’s important to have a happy home to go back to.
The only time I have any difficulty sleeping is when we lose a game, because then I start replaying every part of the game in my mind. I work out what we must do to improve, what I have to tell the players the day after.
Carlo knows that, if you have a champion, a top player, you can say where they went wrong and they will not be upset - they will learn from it. When you go down to the second division, third division, the players are different. They are more defensive because they are less confident. But when you work with, say, Ronaldo, you can say anything, because a champion is a champion and they understand.
For the great players, winning is everything, and as long as the coach can help you win, you listen.