Davide Ancelotti wants to make a name for himself – will he do it at Lille?

Lille’s results under Carlo’s son in Ligue 1 are encouraging but they have been exposed in the Champions League

In a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro, two aspiring young managers sit around a table. Their respective clubs, Flamengo and Botafogo, are fierce rivals on the pitch. The relationship between the managers of the two clubs, Filipe Luís and Davide Ancelotti, however, is significantly more cordial.

Speaking before his first meeting with Ancelotti in Ligue 1 on Sunday, the Monaco manager, Filipe Luís, described his counterpart at Lille as a “really formidable person”. The Brazilian added: “It is something special for us. It will be a pleasure to face my friend.”

There were 12 managerial appointments in Ligue 1 over the summer; Filipe Luís and Ancelotti were two of the most interesting. Filipe Luís won the Premier League with Chelsea but is probably best known in Europe for his eight years at Atlético Madrid, where he won La Liga, the Copa del Rey and two Europa League titles across two spells. He carried on that success in his first job as a manager, winning the Copa Libertadores with Flamengo. “He knows what he’s talking about and how to motivate us,” says the Monaco forward Matthis Abline. “It motivates us even more to have a manager like him behind us.”

Davide Ancelotti has had a different route into management. When your surname is Ancelotti, you can’t exactly make a name for yourself; his father, Carlo, has already seen to that. “I hope to be able to write my story, with my first name, too,” said Davide before Lille played in the Champions League earlier this season. No manager has won more titles (five) or as many games (218) in the competition as his father.

Bar a brief 33-game stint as manager at Botafogo, Davide has spent the last 14 years following his father from club to club and then ultimately to the Brazil national team. From the banks of the river Mersey, to Bavaria, the fervour of the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, the grandeur of the Bernabéu and the vibrancy of the Maracanã. His trip around the world was enriching but he was always in the shadows. Until now.

Ancelotti’s appointment over the summer marked a radical departure at Lille. There was a common thread linking the club’s appointments of Christophe Galtier, Jocelyn Gourvennec, Paulo Fonseca and Bruno Génésio: they were all “a safe pair of hands” and most had considerable experience in Ligue 1. Génésio left Lille in the summer after his contract expired even though he had met the club’s key objective of qualifying for this season’s Champions League. The club’s president, Olivier Létang, simply said it “was the right moment” for a parting of the ways.

Unlike the wider public, Létang was at least familiar with Davide Ancelotti thanks to their time together at Paris Saint-Germain in 2012. Carlo Ancelotti was manager at the time, Létang was the director of football and Davide was the fitness coach. Létang did, nonetheless, use Carlo as a middleman when making his approach for Davide this summer. Carlo has even observed Lille’s start to the season from the stands, attending a draw with PSG in August.

Lille have lost all three of their matches in the Champions League this season and sit second from bottom in the 36-team table but, after their 1-1 draw at Monaco on Sunday, they were just one point behind the Ligue 1 leaders, Rennes. The point earned at the Stade Louis II took Lille’s tally to 15 points from eight games; they have not started a domestic campaign this well since they won the title in 2020-21.

Comparisons to his father are unfair but they are inevitable; the expectations on Davide have been moulded by two decades of his father’s unprecedented success. And it will always be extremely hard, borderline impossible, to live up to them. Every game is seen as proof of hereditary genius or – as had sometimes been the case in the opening weeks – its absence.

The game on Sunday did not offer much evidence of genius. Ethan Mbappé gave Lille the lead from the only clear chance of the first half. Thereafter, they retreated inside their shell. Even before Tanguy Nianzou was sent off for a reckless challenge on Paris Brunner, Monaco had them under the cosh. Ancelotti’s decision to take off a striker in the form of Soriba Diaoune for a defender in Isaac Cossier reflected the manager’s infectious fear.

Lille could not hold on for the win and, in the end, they nearly lost the game. Monaco equalised through Edan Diop with 15 minutes to play and had numerous efforts during a late siege. One side dominated, but the points were shared. In the absence of any clear identity, Ancelotti praised his side’s “solidarity”. For signs of who Davide is beyond the son of the most prolific manager in Europe, the wait goes on. He is out of his father’s shadow but not yet truly in the light.

There was no “headline” fixture in France on Sunday night. The game between Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon was postponed until Monday. As was the case last year, it means that many of PSG’s nine Ballon d’Or nominees will miss the ceremony in London. Their absence last year was the result of a storm, which led to their game in Marseille being delayed by 24 hours.

Unlike in the provincial cities, the planned protest in Paris on Saturday was not banned. With a significant police presence in the capital in an attempt to prevent a recurrence of last week’s riots and looting, and an NFL game to host on Sunday afternoon, the prefecture issued the directive, later adopted by the French league, on Friday.

There was further disruption. Elsewhere in Ligue 1, Toulouse’s home game against Troyes was moved from Saturday to Sunday. In Ligue 2, Montpellier’s game against Red Star was moved from Saturday to Monday. There wasn’t the same degree of disruption in Saint-Étienne, who nonetheless delayed the kick-off of their game against Nantes by 45 minutes following a police directive.

Another year, another call for bids for Ligue 1’s broadcasting rights, the value of which has plummeted in recent seasons. Dazn pulled out after just one season in 2024, giving rise to the Ligue 1+ experiment. The league-owned broadcaster, now in its second season, has been an editorial success but not a financial one. As a result, the president of the French league, Vincent Labrune, has announced a fresh auction for Ligue 1’s broadcasting rights, which will begin next month and end in December.

The prospective deal would begin at the start of next season. Labrune spoke of a “new context” and one more conducive to bigger offers. Recent changes in legislation mean that the rights can be sold in a single “bundle”, offering the option of exclusivity to any prospective buyer. Without citing any broadcasters, Labrune also revealed “registered concrete interests from different actors”. Ligue 1 cannot afford another botched deal.

This is an article by Get French Football News