The ego tamer

If Carlo Ancelotti really excels at something, then that something is dealing with big stars. The most recent case is Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The Paris Saint-Germain player equalled his record goal haul of 35, from his previous season with AC Milan, which blows the 21 goals he got in his first season with the 'Rossoneri' out of the water, as well as the 22 goals he got in his only season with FC Barcelona.

At his previous team, Roman Abramovich's Chelsea, Carlo's task wasn't a walk in the park either: he had to try and surpass the feats of José Mourinho in the prior four seasons. He managed to revive Deco, Anelka, and Drogba, whilst keeping Ballack, Lampard and Cech at a consistently high standard, and picked up three titles in the process: the Community Shield, the league title and the FA Cup.

But the club where Ancelotti really shone, both as a player and as a manager, was with AC Milan. He got the club's big stars Maldini, Shevchenko, Pirlo, Rui Costa, Gattuso, Stam, Inzaghi and Kaká to work together as a team and play the best football of their careers. Ancelotti had his greatest success with that side, winning eight titles.

At Juventus, he was in charge of Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Alessandro Del Piero and Juan Eduardo Esnáider, amongst others. When he first joined the Turin side, his main concern was how best to use the talents of Zizou and Del Pierro. One of his first decisions was to use the Frenchman as an attacking midfielder whilst putting the Italian up front alongside Inzaghi. His intention was to restructure the team's attack, which had been its weakest link until that point. Carlo managed to rebuild a young Juve side. During his time at Juve, he managed to get Conte back into good form and has always believed in hard working midfielders over the more creative types.