:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69406206/187028874.0.jpg)
While Evertonians were quietly pondering a big summer ahead in the transfer window and how Carlo Ancelotti would take the club forward after a disappointing finish to the season, some European giants had been plotting on resolving their managerial roulette with the Italian veteran.
News emerging from Spain [Diario AS, via Football Italia] is that Inter Milan had already reached out to Ancelotti about taking over from the departing Antonio Conte. The 61-year-old manager, in a nod back to his playing and managing days with AC Milan and Juventus, declined the offer however. Milan and Inter are bitter crosstown rivals who inexplicably share the same San Siro stadium (can you even imagine Everton and Liverpool sharing a stadium?!), while Juventus and Inter are also hated counterparts with the Derby d’Italia being one of the most hotly contested fixtures in modern football.
The article goes on to quote Ancelotti as having said -
“If I became what I am today, I owe it to the Milan fans. I cannot betray them,”
Milan remains the longest stop in Ancelotti’s glittering but stop-start managerial career, with his latest 18-month stint on Merseyside more proof to that. And while Ancelotti seemed to indicate that he was all-in on the full-scale, long-term rebuilding project the likes of which he had never managed before, how quickly his head turned from an offer to rejoin Real where he will likely be sent packing in a year or two shows he wasn’t really fully invested in the Everton project.
Twitter continues to be rife with rumours now that Ancelotti has departed that he never got along with the Toffees’ Director of Football Marcel Brands as they had fundamental differences in the kind of player they wanted to bring to Merseyside, but there has been little to substantiate on that chatter.
Meanwhile on Merseyside, one of the candidates to replace the Italian gaffer, former Blues boss David Moyes, appears to be off the market after reportedly signing a new three-year deal with West Ham United, fresh off having taken them to sixth place in the league ahead of the Toffees and with European football in their future next season.