It was a typically quotable compliment from Jurgen Klopp. “He is obviously a smart fox,” said the Liverpool manager 15 months ago. Carlo Ancelotti has been called many things – a triple Champions League winner and an all-time great among them – but the Italian has justified Klopp’s description.
Exclude penalty shootouts and only one manger has tasted victory twice against Klopp in a golden season and a half: Ancelotti. His Napoli felt almost immune to Liverpool’s excellence, making a potentially era-shaping side look distinctly ordinary in three of four meetings.
Liverpool were defeated at the San Paolo in consecutive autumns. Napoli got a draw at Anfield this season; but for a remarkable save from Alisson to deny Arkadiusz Milik, they would have done last season as well. But for that stop, Liverpool would not be Champions League winners now.
Everton’s new manager arrived with the sort of pedigree to appeal to a club who have not triumphed at Anfield since 1999 or beaten Liverpool anywhere since 2010. Ancelotti is in a select band, including Ralf Rangnick and Felix Magath, who have won more than they have lost against Klopp.
He has defeated Liverpool seven times with four different clubs. At his unveiling at Goodison Park, he smiled that Liverpool supporters "are worried to see me because I beat them a lot of times."
He has had a career of such magnitude that he has not been defined by his most famous defeat to them. A lesser manager would have been.
“A six-minute blackout,” Ancelotti wrote in his autobiography of events in Istanbul when AC Milan lost a 3-0 lead in the Champions League final to a Steven Gerrard-inspired Liverpool. “We were our own worst nightmare. The world turned upside down. I was paralysed … I was baffled; nothing made sense.”
Ancelotti has never watched the 2005 Champions League final back; he did win the 2007 counterpart, and at Liverpool’s expense. “It was too beautiful to take revenge for Istanbul,” Ancelotti subsequently said.
Theirs is a history that dates back 35 years; Ancelotti was sidelined when his Roma teammates lost the 1984 European Cup final to Liverpool on their home ground. He remains the last visiting manager to win a European game at Anfield, though Real Madrid’s 3-0 triumph came back in 2014. Earlier that year, he had eliminated Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund in the quarter-finals en route to winning yet another Champions League.
No wonder, then, that Klopp said in November: “If there is any manager in the world who does not need advice from me, it is Carlo Ancelotti.” The Italian’s response was eloquent. “He is one of the few people I would accept advice from, absolutely.”
On Friday, the ever popular Ancelotti said: “Jurgen is my friend.” Klopp responded by calling his counterpart: “One of the smartest people I have met.” Theirs is a mutual admiration society from men who are part of an exclusive group. Liverpool is the world’s only footballing city where both managers are Champions League winners.
Ancelotti, indeed, could have been in the home dugout on Sunday. He and Klopp were the two major contenders to replace Brendan Rodgers in 2015. It is safe to say Liverpool made the correct choice.
Ancelotti has been the manager who can massage superstars’ egos, coaxing successful sides to more triumphs. Klopp is the more dynamic, more transformative figure.
If Klopp emulated Ancelotti in June when he won his first Champions League, now the Italian’s task at Goodison Park is to mimic the German by reviving and reinventing a Merseyside club labouring under the shadow of its glorious past. But first he has to imitate Walter Smith, the last Everton manager to taste victory at Anfield.
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Liverpool's invincibles: an incredible year without a Premier League defeat – in pictures
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Drivers’ championship standings after Singapore:
1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes - 263
2. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari - 235
3. Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes - 212
4. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull - 162
5. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari - 138
6. Sergio Perez, Force India - 68
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Company profile
Name: Tratok Portal
Founded: 2017
Based: UAE
Sector: Travel & tourism
Size: 36 employees
Funding: Privately funded
OTHER IPL BOWLING RECORDS
Best bowling figures: 6-14 – Sohail Tanvir (for Rajasthan Royals against Chennai Super Kings in 2008)
Best average: 16.36 – Andrew Tye
Best economy rate: 6.53 – Sunil Narine
Best strike-rate: 12.83 – Andrew Tye
Best strike-rate in an innings: 1.50 – Suresh Raina (for Chennai Super Kings against Rajasthan Royals in 2011)
Most runs conceded in an innings: 70 – Basil Thampi (for Sunrisers Hyderabad against Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2018)
Most hat-tricks: 3 – Amit Mishra
Most dot-balls: 1,128 – Harbhajan Singh
Most maiden overs bowled: 14 – Praveen Kumar
Most four-wicket hauls: 6 – Sunil Narine
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
What is THAAD?
It is considered to be the US' most superior missile defence system.
Production:
It was first created in 2008.
Speed:
THAAD missiles can travel at over Mach 8, so fast that it is hypersonic.
Abilities:
THAAD is designed to take out projectiles, namely ballistic missiles, as they are on their downward trajectory towards their target, otherwise known as the "terminal phase".
Purpose:
To protect high-value strategic sites, such as airfields or population centres.
Range:
THAAD can target projectiles both inside and outside of the Earth's atmosphere, at an altitude of 93 miles above the Earth's surface.
Creators:
Lockheed Martin was originally granted the contract to develop the system in 1992. Defence company Raytheon sub-contracts to develop other major parts of the system, such as ground-based radar.
UAE and THAAD:
In 2011, the UAE became the first country outside of the US to buy two THAAD missile defence systems. It then deployed them in 2016, becoming the first Gulf country to do so.
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
Du Football Champions
The fourth season of du Football Champions was launched at Gitex on Wednesday alongside the Middle East’s first sports-tech scouting platform.“du Talents”, which enables aspiring footballers to upload their profiles and highlights reels and communicate directly with coaches, is designed to extend the reach of the programme, which has already attracted more than 21,500 players in its first three years.
The lowdown
Badla
Rating: 2.5/5
Produced by: Red Chillies, Azure Entertainment
Director: Sujoy Ghosh
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Amrita Singh, Tony Luke
Brief scores:
Toss: Rajputs, elected to field first
Sindhis 94-6 (10 ov)
Watson 42; Munaf 3-20
Rajputs 96-0 (4 ov)
Shahzad 74 not out
More coverage from the Future Forum
The Settlers
Director: Louis Theroux
Starring: Daniella Weiss, Ari Abramowitz
Rating: 5/5
More from Neighbourhood Watch
One-off T20 International: UAE v Australia
When: Monday, October 22, 2pm start
Where: Abu Dhabi Cricket, Oval 1
Tickets: Admission is free
Australia squad: Aaron Finch (captain), Mitch Marsh, Alex Carey, Ashton Agar, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Chris Lynn, Nathan Lyon, Glenn Maxwell, Ben McDermott, Darcy Short, Billy Stanlake, Mitchell Starc, Andrew Tye, Adam Zampa, Peter Siddle
More on animal trafficking
Januzaj's club record
Manchester United 50 appearances, 5 goals
Borussia Dortmund (loan) 6 appearances, 0 goals
Sunderland (loan) 25 appearances, 0 goals
The biog
Job: Fitness entrepreneur, body-builder and trainer
Favourite superhero: Batman
Favourite quote: We must become the change we want to see, by Mahatma Gandhi.
Favourite car: Lamborghini
Mubalada World Tennis Championship 2018 schedule
Thursday December 27
Men's quarter-finals
Kevin Anderson v Hyeon Chung 4pm
Dominic Thiem v Karen Khachanov 6pm
Women's exhibition
Serena Williams v Venus Williams 8pm
Friday December 28
5th place play-off 3pm
Men's semi-finals
Rafael Nadal v Anderson/Chung 5pm
Novak Djokovic v Thiem/Khachanov 7pm
Saturday December 29
3rd place play-off 5pm
Men's final 7pm
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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