Former Manchester United captain Gary Neville has named the football icon he believes should take over at Old Trafford after Ruben Amorim was sacked earlier this week
Gary Neville has declared Carlo Ancelotti the outstanding candidate to take over at Manchester United and would be happy to wait until after the World Cup for the Brazil boss.
United are in search of a new head coach after dismissing Ruben Amorim and are in talks with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as they first look to appoint an interim boss until the end of the season. Darren Fletcher took charge of the club against Burnley and is set to be in the dugout against Brighton this weekend.
Former Real Madrid boss Ancelotti has already tasted Premier League success. The Italian icon won the division in 2009/10 with Chelsea, in addition to managing Everton.
That experience is key in Neville’s mind, with whoever takes the job permanently having to satisfy four criteria, to avoid the pitfalls the club have suffered since Alex Ferguson’s departure.
“With the last 12 years being a period of massive underperformance for Manchester United managers, there are certain boxes the next candidate now needs to tick,” wrote Neville in the Overlap newsletter.
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“1. You have to be able to handle the media and the noise that comes with this club. It is what it is so get over it and deal with it. It’s why you’re getting paid the big bucks.
“2. You have to show that you can have success getting into the top four, that you can cope with Champions League football and that you can get the best out of a group of players that will include egos and superstars
“3. You must understand the Premier League and English football culture because it’s different to competing in many of the European leagues
“4. You have to understand the Manchester United way, which means you have to be a glass-half-full kind of manager. Be positive and prepared to take risks and play with pace and excitement. In all likelihood that is going to a variation of 4-4-1-1/ 4-2-3-1.
“You have got to be pretty special to tick all four of those boxes and as such, the outstanding candidate for me would be Carlo Ancelotti, even if it would mean potentially delaying his arrival until late July if Brazil reached the World Cup final.
“No-one comes as close to fulfilling everything laid out above than he does. Ironically the club met with Carlo shortly before his retirement in 2013 and we could have short circuited this entire process and started with him at the beginning of the cycle.
“But by that stage he was close to agreeing to joining Real Madrid for his first spell in charge and so what might have been a perfect appointment never happened.”
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