The reason behind the surprise sacking of Carlo Ancelotti

Normally when a club qualifies for the Round of 16 in the Champions League, you don’t expect the manager to be sacked, but Carlo Ancelotti despite guiding Napoli to the knockout phase of the Europian competition has been handed an axe.

It has left many people shell-shocked and everyone is wondering what could be the reason behind this bizarre decision of the Napoli board.

Napoli is not one of the riches clubs in Europe, but still, they have been making good profits in the last few years and the reason why they have been doing so is because they know how to control their pricing.

Ancelotti might have helped Napoli advance to the Champions League knockouts and there was a possibility he could have taken them even to the further stages of the competition, but another side of the story was that Napoli was lagging behind at the seventh position in the Serie A points table.

While their potential qualification to the quarter-finals in the Champions League would have guaranteed money for the club. It was also possible that they might not have made it to top-four in the Serie A, which would have led the club to the financial loss.

Also, if the club had to take that financial loss, it was important that they would be prepared to offload some players in the summer in order to control their pricing, but Ancelotti was not in agreement with that.

It has been reported that Ancelotti had promised contract extension to some of the old players of the club who already had long-term contracts. The club obviously couldn’t afford that unless they made both the quarter-finals of the Champions League as well as the top-four in the Serie A.

With the hierarchy and the manager not on the same page with the club entering such a crucial phase of the season, the board eventually decided to bring in someone else who could possibly align with their vision in a better way.

Cover image credits: Metro