Lucas Digne, one of the French national team players in Euro 2020, gave an interview to L’Equipe newspaper in which he talked about the various coaches he worked with throughout his career (Everton, Barcelona, Roma, Paris Saint-Germain and Lille).
The one who ranks higher is Italian Carlo Ancelotti, whom the French full-back considers even the best strategist he has worked with. “He analyzes opponents well and reads matches well. Try to adapt to the players you have every week. He can change the system during the game with the touch of a finger. The message is transmitted very easily. Luis Enrique was also good at this in Barcelona. We only spoke for five or 10 minutes. About tactics. He was great. Everyone was receptive, but the instructions were also very clear and precise. During training, he would stand on top, on scaffolding, to observe the lines, explaining the movements he wanted to make,” said Denny.
The 27-year-old French full-back also highlighted Ancelotti’s sense of humor, as well as his human quality, which also ended up mentioning the Portuguese’s name, Marco Silva. “With Marco Silva or Ancelotti, we can talk about something more than football. In the morning Ancelotti likes to have breakfast with us, we talk about all or nothing, about what happened the day before, about everyday life, about our families. When my family was born during the pandemic, he and his team were always there.”
Digne also rated fellow Italian Luciano Spalletti as the toughest coach, as well as the most temperamental. But he also left less positive considerations: ‘With Laurent Blanc I had no human contact. With Ernesto Valverde, with whom I spent a year in Barcelona, it was a bit like that. Not connected wonderful. It was not his nature. He was talking to Lionel Messi, who was the captain, but he had to make an effort. It was noticed that he was detained,” he said.
