Football España

The line this summer in Spain was that Real Madrid were finally getting a Guardiola-esque coach, or for the more hardline Madridistas, a tactician. Increasingly at pains to point out that he knew a thing or two about strategy himself, five-time Champions League-winner Carlo Ancelotti had been boxed off in the ‘man-manager’ category, as had Zinedine Zidane, who won three of his own European trophies. Appointing Xabi Alonso was in part a reaction to the slackening of Ancelotti’s…