Carlo Ancelotti is one of world football’s pre-eminent managers.

That is a statement supported by Ancelotti’s glittering CV.

The Italian has exclusively traded in Europe’s grandest trophies and been employed by a selection of the continent’s foremost clubs.

It is a measure of Ancelotti’s relentless success as a manager that a glittering playing career is often overlooked in any discussion about the 60-year-old’s remarkable life in football to date.

The order of conversation is understandable.

Ancelotti’s feat of winning the Champions League three times brackets him in an exclusive three-strong club.

He is one of only two men to have managed in four finals.

Domestically, Ancelotti has claimed titles in four of Europe’s most competitive leagues.

The former Italy international midfielder is most readily associated with AC Milan, the club where he won two European Cups and two league championships in five years as a player and managed with distinction for eight years after arriving in 2001.

Ancelotti’s Milan beat Juventus – the club he managed for two years from 1999 – in the 2003 Champions League final and 12 months later he oversaw the San Siro team’s runaway Serie A success.

AC Milan defeated Liverpool to give Ancelotti his second European Cup as a boss four years after his first.

Chelsea achieved a significant coup when they lured Ancelotti out of Italy for the first time and appointed him manager in 2009.

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Ancelotti’s Chelsea smashed Wigan Athletic 8-0 on the final day of his first season to pip Manchester United to the Premier League title by one point. Six days later, Ancelotti and his club were celebrating a Double after winning the FA Cup final against Portsmouth.

Finishing runners up in the league the following season led to Ancelotti’s exit but he returned to football with a bang, ending French team Paris Saint-Germain’s 19-year wait to win Ligue 1 in his one full season in charge in 2012/13.

Ancelotti stepped into coaching as right-hand man to Arrigo Sacchi with Italy’s 1994 World Cup finalists, before striking out with Reggiana and Parma, who he led to second in Serie A in 1996/97, two points shy of Juventus.

It was with Real Madrid, the club he joined after leaving PSG in 2013, that Ancelotti won his third Champions League.

The Bernabeu team overcame domestic rivals Atletico Madrid in the final to complete a La Liga-Spanish Cup double.

Ancelotti’s second season with Real featured a 22-match winning run in all competitions but his team ended two points behind champions Barcelona in La Liga despite hitting 118 goals in a 38-game campaign.

He returned from a one-year sabbatical to replace Pep Guardiola as manager at Bayern Munich in summer 2016.

Ancelotti’s side duly won the Bundesliga by a 15-point margin from RB Leipzig and stunned Arsenal 10-2 on aggregate in the Champions League before losing a quarter-final to Real Madrid.

He left Munich early the following season and spent 2018/19 in charge of Napoli, leading the Neapolitan club to second in Serie A and the Europa League last eight.

Ancelotti’s playing career peaked as part of the fabled late-‘80s/early-‘90s AC Milan, future mentor Sacchi’s team of Van Basten, Gullit and Rijkaard winning successive European Cups in 1989 and 1990, those triumphs bookended by league titles claimed in 1988 and 1992.

Ancelotti was capped 26 times by Italy and played every match of his country’s 1988 European Championship semi-final campaign.

He was a member of the Italian squad at the two World Cup finals tournaments either side of that competition and in 1990 played in Italy’s 2-1 third-place play-off win over England.

Ancelotti started as a teenager with Parma and was instrumental in the club’s promotion to Serie B before moving in 1979 to Roma, where he started amassing trophies, claiming one league title and four Italian cups in eight years before leaving for AC Milan in 1987.