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Carlo Ancelotti was dismissed at halftime even though he could have won a title in the second half.

Should Carlo Ancelotti's illustrious tenure at Real Madrid indeed come to a close following the Copa del Rey final, it would not be the first time the esteemed Italian manager has departed under similar circumstances. Rumors circulating in Spain suggest that a failure against Barcelona in the upcoming match against Sevilla may prompt Real Madrid president Florentino Perez to take action and dismiss Ancelotti, even with five LaLiga games remaining in the season. This potential turn of events would mark a disheartening conclusion for Ancelotti, a distinguished figure in football who has clinched a record five Champions League titles, including his most recent triumph with Real Madrid before an unexpected elimination by Arsenal in this season's quarter-finals.

Being dismissed after a loss to Barcelona would be especially harsh, especially considering the narrow four-point gap between them and their Clasico rivals in LaLiga, with a crucial head-to-head match yet to be played. However, prestigious clubs and consistent winners do not hesitate to make changes, as Ancelotti experienced early in his coaching career at Juventus. Despite his illustrious playing career, retiring as a two-time European Cup champion with Milan in 1992, Ancelotti transitioned to coaching with notable success. Starting as an assistant with the national team and later achieving promotion to Serie A with Reggiana, he then led Parma to a second-place finish and into the Champions League. Despite being recognized as Italy's top emerging coach, his move to Juventus presented unforeseen challenges.

Following his departure from Parma with a sixth-place finish in 1998, Ancelotti spent six months without a coaching position before expressing interest in meeting with the prominent Turkish club Fenerbahce. A surprising turn of events occurred when he received a call from Luciano Moggi, the general manager of Juventus. Moggi advised Ancelotti to contact him before making any decisions and arranged a secret meeting upon Ancelotti's return from Turkey. This clandestine meeting took place at the residence of Juventus' CEO Antonio Giraudo, where Moggi, along with Antonio Bettega, the vice president, were also present, forming a significant trio in the football world.

Ancelotti arrived in Juve when no one expected it

Do you want to manage Juve?' they asked me. 'Don't you have [Marcelo] Lippi? He's the best,' I replied. 'He's not happy here, and we've thought about you.' Within a few hours, we signed the contract, which they hand wrote in 23 lines on a sheet of paper.” Offered the chance to stay in his homeland and coach the country’s winningest team going was too much to resist for Ancelotti, even if he was on a hiding to nothing as Lippi had won three Serie A titles and the Champions League in the previous years. Yet that wasn’t even the biggest issue - Ancelotti’s past was. As a Roma, Parma and Milan legend, the boy from the south he was never going to quite fit in at Juve in the posh north, and fans made sure he knew that straight away.

In my first week in Turin, I was driving to the office and in the middle of Piazza Crimea there was an obelisk that someone had spray-painted: ‘A pig can’t coach’,” Ancelotti remembered.“Moggi was waiting for me with the Juve hooligans. ‘You have to make peace with Ancelotti,’ he told them. “I played in the 1980s for Roma and our rival was Juve. When I was at Milan, our main enemy was Juve. Then I coached Parma and our rival for the Scudetto was Juve… Ramon Calderon reveals that Ancelotti may have the same problem he had at Real Madrid when he had to sell Ronaldo “They could only see me as an enemy. And that’s it. It’s something I couldn’t change and it didn’t change.”

A ‘pig’ quite clearly could coach, though, and Ancelotti finished runner-up in his first season which objectively was par, but not subjectively for a club where winning is all that mattered.The next season things got worse. A man now synonymous with the Champions League was knocked out in the first group stage for Juve’s earliest exit and only a title win could save him. Heading into the finale with that goal still attainable, Juve and Ancelotti needed a slip up from Sven-Goran Eriksson’s Roma but it didn’t come. In fact, his old side were 2-0 up at half time against Parma, and that’s when the press release arrived that Ancelotti had been sacked during his half-time team talk.

The reason for Ancelotti’s departure is that it is difficult to work in a city where the great part of the fans and the press are against you,” president Umberto Agnelli explained. Ancelotti's final months were traumatic Ancelotti's final months were traumatic Speaking post-match, Ancelotti admitted: "I won't hide that I am sorry about a decision that is hard to digest. "I am very sad with this decision after all the points we have gained this season. I am proud that we were here with a chance of the title on the final day, but I want to look to the future calmly now." Later, he revealed he had even more reason to be upset, as he’d been informed of the decision before the game despite having just signed a contract extension. “When they made the decision to get rid of me, they didn't have the courage to tell me,” Ancelotti recalled. “I found out from the sports journalists in Turin.

You're a dead man, the next coach is Lippi,’ they kept telling me. I couldn't believe it; they had just renewed my contract... “My relationship with Juve was a love affair that never began. We were too different. I was a small-town boy, they were businessmen in suits. A Swatch watch versus a Rolex. Plastic versus gold..." The legend quite liked his Swatch The legend quite liked his Swatch And got revenge on Juve fans anyway And got revenge on Juve fans anyway As it turned out, the new millennium preferred a Swatch as Ancelotti proved to be coaching gold. Returning to old side Milan he beat Juve in the 2003 Champions League final and although they twice finished runners up to the Old Lady, those titles were wiped from the record books due to the Calciopoli match fixing scandal.

Juve would not secure another Champions League title, whereas Ancelotti would go on to win five, two with Milan and three with Madrid. Prior to one of their encounters in 2015, Ancelotti explicitly expressed displeasure with his time at Juventus and highlighted that even if Perez were to dismiss him abruptly over the weekend, it would not equate to the challenges he faced at Juve. He stated, 'I never cared for Turin. It was too sophisticated, light-years away from my preferred lifestyle. Make way for the elite, as here arrives the hefty man with his tortellini.' Ancelotti further disclosed, 'Juventus is a team I never truly embraced and most likely never will. It represented a whole new environment for me, where I never felt at ease. I was merely a small component in the larger mechanism…'