Ancelotti faces old team Milan on home debut

Carlo Ancelotti will make his home debut on the Napoli bench today against the team he turned into world beaters during an eight-year spell as coach.

In one of the delightful twists that football has a habit of providing, AC Milan will be Napoli’s first opponents of the season at the San Paolo as last season’s runners-up aim to build on their opening 2-1 win at Lazio.

Ancelotti, who ended a nine-year exile from Serie A when he agreed to take over at Napoli in May, won the Champions League twice and Serie A once as AC Milan coach before leaving in 2009.

He went on to collect trophies around Europe, winning domestic league titles in England, France and Germany, plus the Champions League with Real Madrid.

Milan, on the other hand, fell on hard times as they struggled to adapt to the new financial realities of Italian football.

In Ancelotti’s absence, they have changed owners twice, suffered several seasons of mid-table mediocrity and are enduring their fifth season without Champions League football. Gennaro Gattuso is their ninth different coach since his departure.

Ancelotti also spent five years of his playing career at Milan and he said in a recent interview with La Repubblica that it was a match at the San Paolo in 1988 when he first began to think of a career in southern Italy.

“It was a unique show and the passion of the crowd in the stands left me speechless,” he said, adding that Saturday’s game would be a “reunion between friends”. Venus Williams' first pay cheque when she won her first Grand Slam title at the age of 20.