"A very bad first half, and a very good second half. The second half gave us confidence, but we must not forget the first half. We simply do not have the luxury of being so bad at the start of any next match."

• Carlo Ancelotti, the coach whose team started a lot of matches "that bad" since he took over the summer before last

There are many logical reasons why football fans ignore coaches' statements and post-match press conferences; Including, for example, that it rarely provides real analytical value, and is often dominated by diplomacy and political calculations, so to speak, in addition to the vast and growing gap in the degree of understanding of the game between fans and coaches.

These reasons do not apply here. Ancelotti is a direct man most of the time, and his long history in coaching on the one hand, and his success in winning titles in the season of his return to Real Madrid on the other hand, gave him a great deal of audacity in dealing with these occasions.

When he was asked about the dispute with Rodrygo Goes at the moment he switched against Villarreal, for example, he said very frankly that he had told the Brazilian that he should not forget his greeting while leaving the stadium, simply and without calculations, then at the same conference he stated that the Brazilian himself would be ideal in the role of playmaker No. 10 If he decides to play 4-2-3-1.

The second reason is the fact that a large segment of Real Madrid fans see the Italian as the leader of a different tactical school than the one to which the likes of Klopp, Tuchel, Guardiola and others belong.

It relies mainly on a simple general framework for playing, and its most important goal is to provide a tactical base that allows its players to improvise and show their skills, which is one of the characteristics that distinguished this team throughout its history; The presence of genius players who come up with the unexpected and thus succeed in ending difficult matches in most of the times.

This is what makes the Italian's statement so important and revealing for several reasons. The first is that it does not reflect the truth at all. In fact, if Ancelotti had said the exact opposite, his statement would have been more logical and consistent with what happened in his current term.

A good number of La Liga matches start with Real Madrid performing less than expected, which is what happened in the knockout matches in the last season of the UEFA Champions League, and it is also what is repeated this season with the Copa del Rey matches, and despite that Real Madrid won most of these matches, So the logical statement here would be: no one has the luxury of starting games that bad, except for Real Madrid Ancelotti.

Indeed, no other team has won so many important matches after starting them badly at Real Madrid's rate under the Italian's leadership, and this is exactly the problem. Surprisingly, the phrase in the title of the report “without a clear personality” is not quoted by a journalist or analyst, but rather what Ancelotti himself used to describe his team.

Of course, Ancelotti said it in praise of the current team, adding that he does not have a clear personality because that is his “will”, because the club wants a team that can adapt to all circumstances, and as he put it: “Can do many things.”

"This Bad"

The problem here is simple. There is no such thing as a "team without a clear personality", and this has nothing to do with Real Madrid or football even because if you put a group of people in a closed room for several hours without any external influences, this group will produce a certain pattern of human communication; One of them will emerge as a leader, dismiss those who are different from their point of view, and after they disagree and debate and wrestle, the rest will settle on a certain way of dealing.

If you don't go to vote, you lose the right to object later because you gave others the right to decide your fate for you. Likewise, in Real Madrid, at a time when Ancelotti asserts that his team is “without a clear personality,” the team actually forms its “clear personality” through the interactions of its members with each other and the opponent, because Ancelotti allowed them to do so, and he also lost the right to object.

The evidence for this is also simple; The aforementioned statement seems to have come out after the derby match against Atletico Madrid in the quarter-finals of the King’s Cup, but in fact, it came after a similar display against Villarreal in the previous round of the same tournament.

His first half ended with two clear goals for the Yellow Submarines before Ancelotti’s team returned with three goals in the second half, despite this, the team imposed its personality on Ancelotti himself and returned the ball against Atletico Madrid, and we would not be surprised if the same thing happened against other teams in La Liga, despite the Italian's reaffirmation that the team must start well.

This "badness” in the first half has become a character for this team and its personality, as well as the enormous unprecedented ability to return from difficult situations. We can even say that the team became addicted to this narrative after last season, as well as a good sector of its fans, simply because it gives them the right to laugh last, and there is no louder laughter than the laughter of the dead who suddenly came back to life, even in drama.

Evidence for this is provided by Ancelotti again, the man who promised a “new beginning” and a “bright future” after the El Clasico defeat in the Super Cup final, to surprise everyone that that narrative that was repeated until it was decided became stronger than him and that it became filling the void that he decided to leave voluntarily separately. as Ancelotti described it.

This leads us to moments of extreme surrealism when the coach himself comes out after this promise saying that he "does not understand how a team can perform so badly in the first half and then so well in the second half".

Contemplate this statement for a moment and you will realize that the team that started most of the UEFA Champions League matches last season poorly and was able to return to the result over the biggest teams and the most powerful coaches, now believes that it does not need anything more against Villarreal, Sociedad, Bilbao and Valencia. on the contrary; The matter is completely understandable, natural and logical, according to the previous data.

The biggest problem here is the fact that this style victimizes many players