Brazil plan to appoint Carlo Ancelotti complicated by Saudi Pro League player exodus

The plan is bold, and at the time it was hatched, it made sense. Carlo Ancelotti, hugely decorated doyen of club football, adaptable enough to have won championships in all five of Europe’s top-ranked leagues, earmarked to become the manager of Brazil, the most successful nation in World Cup history. What could go wrong?

So enthused by the idea is Ednaldo Rodrigues, the president of the Brazil Football Confederation, that two months ago he announced the deal was all but done. Ancelotti would see out one more season at Real Madrid, where he is in the third year of a second stint, and join Brazil’s Selecao as manager next summer in time for June’s Copa America.

Yet Rodrigues had been jumping ahead. The Italian Ancelotti is interested, talks have taken place but both parties could still step back from the arrangement.

There are hitches, too. The South Americans have not had a foreign manager for almost six decades, and there are those who think the national team so important to the country’s sense of sovereignty that it should always be managed by a Brazilian.

More pragmatically, there is an argument that, for all his wisdom, and his long-held enthusiasm for taking on a national team role, it is a hard ask of Ancelotti that he should fly across the Atlantic in June and go briskly into a major tournament within less than three weeks of the end of a club season he is intensively involved with at Madrid.

Which is where Fernando Diniz, Brazil’s interim manager, fits in. He is temporarily in the job, in charge for the season’s World Cup qualifiers, starting against Bolivia on Saturday, with a view to assisting Ancelotti as of next summer. Might that work? Ancelotti will not answer the question. He has declared he will not