Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti has been hailed as a “master” of his craft amid a claim he is the only manager to have impressed under the pressures of handling the Paris Saint-Germain hot seat.
Unlike London which currently boasts a dozen Premier League and Football League clubs, petrodollar-fuelled PSG are Paris’ only top flight representatives in France’s Ligue 1 and given their huge financial resources, the expectation levels on them to succeed are immense.
In Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, PSG boast the two most-costly footballers in the world at the head of a galaxy of expensively-assembled stars and on the domestic front they have dominated proceedings for several years, winning seven out of the last eight titles.
However, their quest to conquer Europe remains elusive having lost this year’s Champions League final to Bayern Munich.
The club’s modern revival, under the wealthy stewardship of Qatar Sports Investments, began under current Blues boss Ancelotti, who in 2013 steered them to their first French championship for 19 years, and having subsequently been succeeded by Laurent Blanc, Unai Emery and now Thomas Tuchel in the moneyed era, former PSG player and coach Paul Le Guen reckons the Italian is the only man to have held the post who can hold his head up high.
Sport Witness quote Le Guen, 56, who also had a stint in British football with Rangers between 2006-7, as telling Le Parisien: “The master remains, for me, Ancelotti.
“I watched him at Chelsea or elsewhere and I told myself: ‘Wow, he’s good!’.
“He never tried to go to war against a difficult question from a journalist.
“He kept it to himself and always started his answer with ‘You’re right’, and then gave his speech. He bluffed me.”
