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Debates around who might be the greatest manager of all time rarely hone in on Carlo Ancelotti but the 62-year-old coach is already the only manager to have won league titles in four of Europe’s big five leagues and his hugely impressive start back at Real Madrid has him on course to make it a clean sweep of five out of five.
Ask Real Madrid supporters at the start of the season, which clubs they saw as their biggest rivals and they would probably have said Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.
Barcelona are currently 16 points behind Real Madrid, albeit with one game in hand. And if Real Madrid win the Madrid derby this weekend they will be 13 points clear of Diego Simeone’s team, albeit also having played a game more.
Carlo Ancelotti is on course to win a record fifth league title in as many European divisions
His Real Madrid side are top of LaLiga, eight clear of Sevilla and 16 points ahead of Barcelona
Sevilla are still in the rear view mirror but the eight-point gap (again having played a game more) is healthy and they have already beaten them once this season.
Ancelotti is too long in the tooth to be chilling champagne just yet but he has laid the foundations for a league-winning season. And after success in Italy with Milan, Germany with Bayern and France with PSG if he could add La Liga with Real Madrid to the Premier League he won with Chelsea in 2010 it would be a domestic achievement to match his three-times winner, Champions League exploits.
Madrid’s early season advantage owes something to Barcelona’s catastrophic start and to the malaise that hangs over Atletico Madrid, but it also owes a huge debt to Ancelotti who has taken the team to another level after inheriting it from Zinedine Zidane.
Saturday’s win over Real Sociedad was the perfect reminder of that. The goals came from Vinicius and Luka Jovic – two players who had been left behind during the Zidane era.
Vinicius Jr (back left) has come alive under the Italian, while Luka Jovic (left) has
