Free Carlo Ancelotti by Aleesandro Alciato, Carlo Ancelotti

of bread, house, football, bowl of tortellini (guess who came up with that one), goal, stadium, pussy, car, cup of coffee, and so on, until we’d named fifty objects. De Michelis: “Now I’m going to turn the blackboard around, and I’m going to name them all, in order, without looking.” He did it, too: loaf of bread, house, soccer ball, bowl of tortellini, goal, stadium, pussy, car, cup of coffee … He didn’t miss a single one. “Now I’ll repeat all the words in reverse order: cup of coffee, car, pussy, stadium, goal, bowl of tortellini, soccer ball, house, loaf of bread.” Incredible. We thought we were smarter than him, we weren’t about to let him get away with it.
    “Pardon me, Doctor, but what was number thirty again?”
    “Sheet of paper.”
    What about number twenty? “Pen.”
    And number forty-seven? “Sofa.”
    New lesson: the brain can do an amazing number of things. Every night, after two daily training sessions, that’s what we did for an hour and a half. Then we started learning relaxation techniques. We would attain a state of complete relaxation through music and words. First we studied the theory of relaxation, and then we’d put it into practice. We’d listen to a piece of music, usually the theme song from
Chariots of Fire
, with the lights turned down low.De Michelis and Zaccuri would talk over the theme music: “Now, relax your body, listen to your heartbeat. Imagine that you’re on the soccer field, you see the stadium full of fans, the match is about to begin, you smell the aroma of the grass.” They were like a couple of celebrity hypnotists. I still use their techniques today when I’m in a stressful situation. The first team member to collapse was usually Francesco Zanoncelli. He didn’t just fall asleep, he fainted. We could have stuck a fork in him, he was so cooked. By the end of the relaxation session, half the team was sleeping.
    So that was A. C. Milan, the team that was scheduled to win the Italian Scudetto this year, the UEFA Champions’ Cup the next season, and the Intercontinental Cup the third season.
Sem mis ben
, as the Milanese would say: We’re all set. When they turned the lights back on, we’d pick up Zanoncelli’s lifeless body and head upstairs to bed. When training began, I weighed 84 kilos (185 pounds); by the time it was done, I was down to 78 kilos (171 pounds). After training camp, I went back home. I knocked at the door, and my own mother didn’t recognize me. There was a stranger at the door. “What have they done to you? Look at you, you’re just skin and bones …”
    Psychologically, we were becoming powerhouses. Part of it was the sheer challenge of tolerating Arrigo Sacchi. He’d explain game plans at night, just as you were falling asleep. He’d sketch them out on the door of your room. He was especially priceless when he had to explain strategy to Gullit and van Basten, who spoke no Italian. In that case, the fallback was English, which made it hard to keep a straight face. When we had to sit through the first meetings in English, it was pure torture to keep from laughing out loud. Toavoid snorting, or just bursting into hilarity, we would pretend to clear our throats. Me and Tassotti started, and soon everyone was doing it.
“Its nesessari tu ev a sciort tim”:
if I had to write it down in black and white, that’s how it looked to me, as an Italian. It’s necessary to have a short team.
“Uen de boll arraivs, uan go e uan cam.”
When the ball arrives, one go and one come. It truly was impossible to understand.
    Everything sort of culminated just before a friendly match in Parma. Technical pregame meeting: oh, Lord, sense of terror, what’s he going to say now? What are we supposed to do? We walked into the meeting room, there was a pillar in the middle of the room, all twenty-two of us clustered behind it, trying to hide; if we broke into laughter, how would he ever know? This was the first pillar in the history of the