Carlo Ancelotti to Arsenal: His CV is ‘ridiculous’ but he hasn’t taken on a ‘challenge’ like this, says Matt Upson

1/9
Richard Parry12 December 2019

Carlo Ancelotti remains the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Unai Emery as Arsenal manager, but one of their former players feel the Italian would have to change tact to take on the challenge.

Standard Sport first revealed the Gunners’ interest in Ancelotti back in January 2018, when breaking the news Arsene Wenger was likely to leave the club that summer, and the club are expected to hold talks with the Italian over their current vacancy .

Ancelotti is one of only three manager’s to have won the Champions League on three occasions, and the only person to have done so with three different clubs.

His calibre would make him an attractive option for any of Europe’s pristine clubs looking for a new manager, and his availability having been sacked by Napoli on Tuesday night has only strengthened that lure.

But Matthew Upson, who spent six-years at Arsenal, says that for all his success, he has never taken on a challenge like this before.

“When you rattle out the list of names from Juventus, AC Milan and Chelsea and Real Madrid and you can go on and on,” he told Sky Sports. “The Champions League’s he’s won, the league titles won across three-four different leagues: His CV is ridiculous.”

“But when he comes into those clubs they’re never normally suffering too much. He’s taken over from a relatively positive reign and the team is in quite good health shall we say, and I think this would be very much a different challenge [managing Everton or Arsenal]”.

“Only he can answer that question [whether he would want the challenge of managing Arsenal]. But he hasn’t really looked to take on that challenge before.

“Now whether or not that’s because he hasn’t had to is a different matter. Maybe the timings of things has been perfect, he always waited and said ‘alright, that one’. It’s meticulous the way he’s gone about the clubs and the success he’s had from one to the other, the condition he’s taken them over in and the condition he’s left them in. It’s been such a polished career so far, is he going to change it for a different challenge? Perhaps he wants that.

“Perhaps his touch will get the best out of that current group of players.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT