Carlo Ancelotti is swapping Real Madrid for Brazil in one of the biggest moves in world soccer. The problem is, neither he, nor Madrid, want to talk about it.
As coaching switches go, they don’t come any bigger than this.
But when news broke Monday that Ancelotti was leaving the sport's most successful and iconic club team to take charge of its most successful and iconic national team, there was an awkward silence.
Madrid chose to ignore the announcement by the Brazilian soccer federation and was still to publicly acknowledge it 24 hours later.
There was silence, too, from Ancelotti, who didn’t even provide a quote for his new employer when it published its official statement.
That left an uncomfortable vacuum until Ancelotti finally confirmed his departure during a scheduled news conference on Tuesday, which he only took part in because he was supposed to preview Madrid's upcoming match against Mallorca.
“If I didn’t have this news conference today it would have been a fantastic day. But in this news conference I have to explain things that I don’t want to explain," the Italian coach said.
Becoming coach of record five-time world champion Brazil should be among the proudest moments of Ancelotti's career. He will be the first foreign coach of Brazil at a World Cup — taking charge of the team of Pele, Ronaldo and Neymar; and the most iconic yellow jersey in soccer.
But even for Ancelotti — who is famed for his cool demeanor on the sideline, cigar smoking and the odd raised eyebrow — his reaction has been understated.
The 65-year-old Ancelotti — who has won a record five Champions League titles as a coach — begins his new job later this month with a view to leading Brazil to next year's World Cup.
With three more rounds of the Spanish season to go, Ancelotti said he did not want “anybody asking me about other things, because I respect this jersey a lot and I want to respect it until the last day.”
The announcement came after Madrid's 4-3 loss to Barcelona over the weekend all but confirmed the defending Spanish champion would surrender its league title.
Barcelona needs just two points to be crowned champion and can complete the job against Espanyol on Thursday.
Ancelotti's exit has been long-trailed, with departing Bayer Leverkusen coach Xabi Alonso widely expected to replace him. So news of the deal will not have come as a surprise to Madrid, which was involved in the negotiations to release Ancelotti early from a contract that had another year to run.
But its silence has been notable, with no messages of congratulations or thanks to a coach that won two Champions League titles and the Spanish title in his second spell at the club.
Ancelotti also coached Madrid from 2013-15, which saw him win another Champions League.
Despite Ancelotti's future being confirmed, Madrid has not been pushed into responding with an announcement of its own succession plans.
“Real Madrid will release the statement when they want. There’s no problem whatsoever. They’ll do it at the appropriate time for Real Madrid and there’s nothing further to add," Ancelotti said.
While Madrid is doing things in its own time, Brazil was coming under increasing pressure to announce a successor to Dorival Júnior, who was fired in March after a humbling 4-1 loss to bitter rival Argentina in Buenos Aires.
The Brazilian federation enlisted the help of Brazilian businessman Diego Fernandes, a CEO of a banking firm, to facilitate negotiations over arguably the best active coach in soccer.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has previously been linked with the job but signed a contract extension with the Premier League club this season.
The appointment of Ancelotti is a major coup for a country that hasn't lifted the World Cup since 2002 and is desperate to return to the summit of the sport next year.
By securing Ancelotti this month, it means he can get to work straight away with World Cup qualifying matches against Ecuador and Paraguay coming up in June.
It was possible Ancelotti could have stayed on to lead Madrid at the expanded Club World Cup in the United States in June and July. That would have served as a fitting parting, with a chance for him to add to his decorated career.
Instead, Ancelotti's focus will be on Brazil's attempts to challenge Argentina, which was crowned world champion in 2022.
The record 15-time European Cup winner was knocked out of the Champions League in the quarterfinals and is on the verge of being usurped by Barcelona in the league.
At a club with the most demanding standards, a change was bound to come.
Alonso — a Champions League winner with Madrid as a player — is considered one of the most exciting young coaches in the game and led Leverkusen to the German league and cup double in his first full season in charge last year.
That success saw him linked with Madrid and Liverpool last season, but he decided to stay on for another year in Germany.
He confirmed this month that he will be leaving Leverkusen at the end of the season, with a move to Madrid widely tipped.
On Tuesday, Ancelotti did little dampen speculation about Alonso's expected arrival.
“I like Alonso a lot,” he said. “I don’t have any advice for him because he already has all the tools needed to become a great coach in the future.”
James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Real Madrid's head coach Carlo Ancelotti reacts during the Spanish La Liga soccer match between Real Madrid and Celta Vigo at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)
Real Madrid's head coach Carlo Ancelotti reacts during the Spanish La Liga soccer match between Real Madrid and Celta Vigo at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”
The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.
With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next?
“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”
Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.”
Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.
Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.
Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”
Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.
“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.
Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.
Trump on Sunday mocked Denmark’s efforts at boosting Greenland’s national security posture, saying the Danes have added “one more dog sled” to the Arctic territory’s arsenal.
Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON."
“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark's chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump's influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.
The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.
The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Rubio, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside, to make sure there are no traitors.”
Trump said that “a lot” of Cuban guards tasked with protecting Maduro were killed in the operation. The Cuban government said in a statement read on state television on Sunday evening that 32 officers were killed in the U.S. military operation.
Trump also said that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, is in tatters and will slide further now with the ouster of Maduro, who provided the Caribbean island subsidized oil.
“It's going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It's going down for the count.”
Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”
Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.
“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.
Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”
“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.
AP writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba, and Darlene Superville traveling aboard Air Force One contributed reporting.
In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)
