Real Madrid’s Carlo Ancelotti

The quadruple is still alive as Paris prepares to host the Champions League final, but only when it comes to Carlo Ancelotti’s pursuit of a fourth European Cup. 

The Real Madrid coach can eclipse Liverpool‘s Bob Paisley and his Madrid predecessor, Zinedine Zidane, by becoming the first to win four Champions Leagues as a manager if the LaLiga champions beat Liverpool in Stade de France.

History awaits for Ancelotti, the 62-year-old Italian manager who also won two European Cups as a midfielder in Arrigo Sacchi’s great AC Milan side in 1989 and 1990, but there is no sense of personal legacy being a driving force for him today.

Here is a coach who has won as many European Cups as Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp combined, more than Jose Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson, Vicente del Bosque, Ottmar Hitzfeld and Johan Cruyff, But, despite standing on the verge of becoming the first to win it four times, the prematch build-up is centred not on Ancelotti but on Karim Benzema and Mohamed Salah, Luka Modric and Virgil van Dijk the great players who will decide the outcome on the pitch.

In the meantime, Ancelotti wins a trophy, shrugs those shoulders and leaves it to the players and the president to take the plaudits, although he did celebrate Real’s LaLiga title this season by smoking a cigar on the team bus during the trophy parade.

Liverpool are the team standing between Ancelotti and his “personal quadruple,” and they are an opponent that has delivered joy and pain in similar measure over the years. 

Real Madrid’s Carlo Ancelotti

In 2007, Ancelotti won his second Champions League as a coach by guiding Milan to victory over Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool in Athens, but two years earlier, he was on the wrong side of the so-called “Miracle of Istanbul” when Liverpool overturned a 3-0 half-time deficit to draw 3-3 and win on penalties.