Carlo Ancelotti, 66, a northern Italian, learned to speak Spanish, French, English, German and Portuguese. At home he spoke Emilian, a dialect common in Reggiolo families in the 1960s, the Emilia-Romagna region, where the current coach of the Brazilian team was born.
Emiliano-Romanholic is out of use. Today Ancelotti uses the dialect only to communicate with his sister, a remnant of the family generation. In writing, Emiliano makes expressive use of acute accents, circumflexes and umlauts. In speech, the sounds come out more closed compared to Italian.
Since taking over the Brazilian team in May, Ancelotti has spoken in Portuguese, a language even further removed from the Emilian language of his homeland. It doesn’t seem like a problem for someone who has worked in Europe’s top five football leagues and learned to speak the language of all of them.
In interviews, the trainer pronounces words like “marcação” as if they had an acute accent — something like “marcaçao” —, in an apparent effort to demonstrate language learning.
For his progress in mastering the language, Ancelotti has received praise from co-workers, journalists and his private teacher. He has been taking an online Portuguese course since June with professor Roberto Piantino.
“The fact that he masters different languages is, at the same time, a facilitator and a burden, because it causes the mixing and use, in most cases, of Spanish”, says Piantino, who came to the coach through journalist friends who showed the Italian their CV.
The professor states that he saw the coach having some difficulty understanding in his first interview and saw an opportunity there. He was already a fan of the Italian’s work in European football, and devoured “Carlo Ancelotti: Calm Leadership”, the coach’s book.
Ancelotti is punctual and diligent on video calls. He is the one who usually calls the teacher, not the other way around. It also shows curiosity, according to Piantino. With so many languages in his head, particularities of the Portuguese language still surprise him. The other day, he asked the teacher to explain why Portuguese, among the Latin languages, is the one that lists the days of the week with “fair”, and not through astronomy.
“In the first class I used a lot of Italian, but in the following classes the use of Portuguese was predominant. I only used some Italian to translate something he didn’t understand, or to explain it better.”
The coach lives between Vancouver, Canada, where he lives with his wife, and Rio de Janeiro, where the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) is based, in addition to visiting the countries where the team operates. In five months he was in Ecuador, Bolivia, South Korea, Japan and England.
Due to travel, classes, lasting one hour, are taught according to the schedule, with no defined frequency. In his spare moments at his hotel in Rio, Ancelotti has been trying to familiarize himself with the pronunciation of Brazilian Portuguese through the Duolingo app and broadcasting football matches. He tries to watch all Botafogo games, a club that was coached by his son Davide Ancelotti, 36, from July to December.
For the professor, a Corinthians native, the Rio accent can create a bit more difficulty in understanding Ancelotti, compared to the São Paulo accent, which is closer to the Italian cadence. In some press conferences he asks the reporter to repeat the question in a louder tone.
Piantino says he personalized the classes. Common topics of conversation when learning a language, such as phrases to be said in a restaurant or at an airport, were left aside. The teacher says to focus on expressions about the game.
“The urgency in the material was focused on football. Retreating, shooting, exchanging, advancing, closing the side, are our specificities in the language of football and expressions to better explain to the players and the press, despite the fact that, with the players, he communicates in the language he wants”, he states.
Employees at hotels and stadiums where the coach passed reinforce the characteristic of friendliness, wrapped in discretion. He has been surprised by his coexistence.
Despite managing some of the biggest teams in the world for 25 years, Ancelotti appears slightly embarrassed by the apparatus necessary for his presence in public places — such as a corridor at the Maracanã that is closed for security to take him to the elevator to the box, or a wing of a restaurant that is isolated during dinner.
He has adapted to Brazil because he looks for the Italian in him, according to people who have lived with the coach and spoken to the Sheet. He was pleased to know that Brazilians eat polenta, their favorite childhood dish.
During a visit in September to Fratelli, a regular restaurant for Rio football managers and businesspeople, in Barra da Tijuca, Ancelotti drank the Italian wine Amarone, ate pasta with lamb ragu and finished the meal with a glass of grappa, an Italian brandy.
Accompanied by his children, he was taken to the restaurant by work colleagues Juan, former defender and technical coordinator of the CBF, and Branco, former left-back, four-time champion with the national team in 1994, and youth coordinator for Brazil. Both played in Italian football.
“He was very cordial. I wanted to talk about Italian food. We didn’t talk to him because our Italian chef wasn’t here, but there will be other opportunities,” says Carlos Sales, sommelier at Fratelli.
During Flamengo’s time, Jorge Jesus, a loyal Fratelli customer, had a dish named after him after winning the Libertadores with Flamengo in 2019. The Jesus mixed grigliata is a mixture of roasted seafood, served with saffron rice.
Sales, one of Fratelli’s oldest staff, wants to pamper Ancelotti like the restaurant pampered Jesus. Coordinate with the chef to create a new dish named after the Italian, one that is very typical of the country of the boot, if the hexa comes from the hands of the coach.
