Ancelotti's Favorite

“The Pressure that I have had perhaps it has been the heaviest in football that I remember, and not because it was my case. Me I don't remember anything like it“That is how he meant Diego López, in an interview with AS last Christmas, alluding to the controversial months that he lived at Real Madrid when signed in January 2013 and Jose Mourinho decided to grant him ownership to the detriment of Iker Casillas. Much has been said about that controversial stage of the Portuguese, and yet there was another coach who gave the current Espanyol goalkeeper even more minutes.

Is about Carlo Ancelotti, with whom he will meet again this Sunday at the RCDE Stadium a Diego López who was undisputed starter in LaLiga in the 2013-14 season, under the command of the Italian, in which he played 36 games, plus a Champions League game. However, the situation of Lugo that campaign could not be more paradoxical, since both the continental tournament and the Copa del Rey were in the hands of Casillas, and they were precisely the titles that he conquered the real Madrid.

Ancelotti's love for the now parakeet came from afar, as the coach himself revealed in October 2013: “In 2006, when I was at Milan, Dida (Nelson de Jesús Silva, owner of the ‘Rossonera goal between 2002 and 2010) had a problem, we looked at goalkeepers from Europe and Diego was one of us trying to sign“.

That admiration was reciprocated by the footballer, who in life would end up defending the Milan framework, from which in May 2015 he asserted that “Ancelotti is a great coach; if he is not the best in the world, he is among the best three“Now they will meet again, with 'Carletto' back on the Madrid bench and Diego making history at the Espanyol goal.