Carlo Ancelotti has revealed the decision behind his tactics at Real Madrid during his first few months in charge.
The Blancos boss has released a new book in Italian called ‘Il mio Albero di Natale’ – My Christmas Tree – focusing on tactics, man-management and training in his career.
“With Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo, the best system is 4-3-3,” he told Gazzetta dello Sport.
“Bale took a while to arrive, so at the start I sought a 4-4-2 for greater balance. With Bale I went back to the initial idea and now we need to find that balance.
“As we saw from recent games, there’s a lot of work to do!
“The counter-attack is the simplest way of creating a scoring opportunity. Clearly just using the counter means you don’t have an identity, but when there’s space for it with the strikers we’ve got, it becomes lethal.
“There is a certain demonization of the term in Spain and the word has to be used carefully.
“I was talking about Hernan Crespo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic told me: ‘He was a great striker, but not someone who can win a game by himself. There are only three of those: Ibracadabra, Messi and Ronaldo.’ Ibra is right.
“I have been coaching for 18 years and football has changed a lot in that time,” Ancelotti goes on.
“The idea [with the book] was to show how it mutated via my personal experiences. It is a book dedicated to Coaches, to those who love football and are curious to see from the inside how a team works.
“I am in the locker room every morning. I speak to some players, while others might be angry and it’s better to wait for them to calm down. It’s not an issue of controlling the squad, but of communicating and seeing if there are any problems.”
