The fans at Real Madrid paid tribute to Carlo Ancelotti for his final match at the club. PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP via Getty Images

MADRID -- Carlo Ancelotti had warned us before the game: "I get emotional quickly. My grandfather did, and my father did too. So if I cry, there's no problem, I won't hide it." So when the tears came, on Saturday at the Santiago Bernabéu, it was no surprise. Real Madrid had just beaten Real Sociedad 2-0 in their last match of the LaLiga season. But the game itself didn't matter, and neither did the result.

As the stadium's giant screens showed video highlights of Ancelotti's six years a Madrid across his two spells as coach the camera cut away to show him on the touchline, taking it all in. His eyes were already red, as he puffed out his cheeks, trying to compose himself. He wiped away his tears and almost reluctantly stepped out onto the pitch, taking a microphone to address the crowd.

"It's been an honor, a pleasure, to coach this club," he said. "It's an unforgettable story. Nobody will forget Karim [Benzema]'s three goals against Paris Saint-Germain [in 2022]. Nobody will forget Rodrygo's two goals against Manchester City [that same year]. Nobody will forget Joselu's two goals [against Bayern Munich, in 2024]. And I won't forget every day I've spent here. Ciao."

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Ancelotti, the most successful coach in Real Madrid's history, was saying goodbye, and he was feeling the weight of the moment. The timing might be right, and his destination -- Brazil -- couldn't be more exciting. But it's still a wrench for Ancelotti to leave Madrid, the city he calls home, and the club he loves.

In the end, he wasn't alone. Luka Modric, arguably the club's best-ever midfielder, was playing his last game at the Bernabéu. Before the game, twin banners were unfurled at either end of the stadium. "Thank you, Carletto," one said. "Thank you, legend," said the other, for Modric.

But Modric will play for Madrid at the FIFA Club World Cup this summer, before he departs. For Ancelotti, this is it: his last Real Madrid game, his last starting XI, his last half-time team talk, the last of what he said must have been 700 news conferences.

Ancelotti has left Real Madrid before. He was first fired on May 25, 2015. When asked why, club president Florentino Pérez famously said: "I don't know." Really, the reason was simple: Madrid hadn't won a major trophy that season, so Ancelotti was gone. Ten years later, almost to the day, he's leaving again, for the same reason.

But Ancelotti will be part of this club forever now. No manager has won more than Ancelotti's 15 trophies here. Only Miguel Muñoz -- who was coach for 15 years -- has managed the team in more games. "My bond with Real Madrid is eternal," Ancelotti said on Friday, in a farewell statement on social media.

And so are the memories, the moments, and the memes. Ancelotti, wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigar, on the team's open-top bus after winning the league in 2022. Ancelotti, relentlessly chewing gum on the touchline, a habit he picked up after quitting smoking. Ancelotti, raising one, iconic eyebrow, before effortlessly handling another journalist's question, in his own, idiosyncratic mix of Spanish and Italian.

As Ancelotti said, nobody who was present for Real Madrid's inexplicable run of UEFA Champions League comebacks at the Bernabéu in 2022 will ever forget them. "Obviously, the first memories [that come to mind] are the comebacks," he had said on Friday. "The nights against Chelsea, PSG, City, are forever."

He was unfairly pigeonholed as an expert man manager but limited tactician. It was an image he resented, and fought against. "Everybody recognizes that I'm fantastic at [man] management, but this team is well coached," he said, delaying the end of a news conference to make a point, in April 2023. "If we win the Copa [del Rey], we'll have won every possible trophy in two seasons. Some teams don't do that in a lifetime."

Despite his reputation, Ancelotti wasn't only about a light touch. This is a coach who reinvented Ángel Di María as a box-to-box midfielder to win the Champions League in 2013-14; made Karim Benzema a Ballon d'Or-winning goal machine in 2021-22; turned Jude Bellingham into a free-scoring, line-leading false No. 9 in 2023-24.

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He found tactical solutions to all kinds of problems, until he was confronted with one he couldn't fix: how to fit Kylian Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior, Bellingham and Rodrygo into this season's team, while maintaining the admirable "collective commitment" that had won Madrid the double a year earlier.

"Real Madrid is a demanding club, but it was to be," Ancelotti said this week. "Its history doesn't allow it to do things any other way." And that means Ancelotti is leaving what might be his last club job, to take Brazil into the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with one of his former players, Xabi Alonso, stepping into his shoes.

Yes, this season has been a clear failure by Real Madrid standards. But that won't detract from Ancelotti's legacy. His second act, with 11 trophies -- including two Champions Leagues -- in four years, has made sure of that. And it's all the more impressive for being so unexpected, a glorious accident.

When Zinedine Zidane walked away in May 2021, angry at a lack of backing from the club, Ancelotti wasn't on Madrid's managerial shortlist. His first spell, between 2013 and 2015, had brought La Décima, the club's 10th European Cup. But it hadn't ended well. There was unhappiness at the way his sacking was handled. And anyway, that was six years ago. Ancelotti was at Everton now, and viewed by almost everybody as nearing the end of his top-level career.

Ancelotti wasn't ready to accept that. He has since explained that, in a conversation with the club about possible signings for Everton, he suggested himself as Zidane's replacement. What followed was like a dream. In his first season back, those comebacks -- and Benzema's goals -- won Madrid the Champions League, and LaLiga.

The next season was tougher; Ancelotti almost lost his job in 2023, when he was first tempted by Brazil. Instead, he signed a new deal, and then 2023-24 was near impeccable: another double, another Champions League. It might have been Ancelotti's best comeback of all. He called it a "10 out of 10" season.

But as Ancelotti admitted after that Champions League final at Wembley, there is "continuous demand" at Real Madrid. "We are never satisfied," he said. And so this season's failure demands changes, and one of them is the manager.

The problems in 2024-25 have been well documented. They began last summer, when important players left, and were not replaced. It wasn't just Toni Kroos, whose absence has been felt most keenly; it was club captain Nacho, and underrated 'Plan B' center forward Joselu. Yes, one of the world's best players arrived, in Mbappé. But in other areas, in midfield and defense, the squad was weaker.

Sources told ESPN that Ancelotti had pushed for signings in private, but in public he has refused to criticize the club's inaction. "Since I've been here, Real Madrid have signed [Eduardo] Camavinga, [Antonio] Rüdiger, [Aurélien] Tchouaméni, Bellingham, Mbappé," he said this week. "Could I ask for more [signings]? No."

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Worse was to follow when arguably the team's two best defenders, Dani Carvajal and Éder Militão, were ruled out with long-term injuries. By the end of the season, all four of Madrid's first-choice back four were unavailable. And the absence of Carvajal, added to those of Kroos and Nacho, went far beyond what he offers on the pitch. Players who were leaders and role models for the next generation were gone.

As early as Madrid's first league game of the season, on Aug. 18, 2024, away at Mallorca -- a flat 1-1 draw -- Ancelotti was aware of a problem. "The defending wasn't good," he said. "It was hard for us to win the ball after losing it. When I talk about defending, we're talking about attitude and collective commitment. The team was too open."

It was a message aimed at the players, which never seemed to get through. "[The forwards] have done a fantastic job in attack, but the team needs their defensive help too," Ancelotti said in February. "We've lacked a bit of balance in the team... It's a collective problem." The injuries, added to the squad's preexisting flaws, would have been difficult for any coach to overcome. But that hasn't shielded Ancelotti from criticism. It's a coach's job to get the best out of the players at their disposal. Ancelotti has been working with a team assembled at huge expense -- boasting three players who finished in the top six in last year's Ballon d'Or -- and they have underperformed.

Nowhere was that more evident than Madrid's four Clásico losses this season, beaten 4-0, 5-2, 3-2 and 4-3 by Barcelona. That, added to the team's comprehensive 5-1 aggregate defeat to Arsenal in the Champions League quarterfinals, meant there was no doubt that Ancelotti would be leaving, a year before his contract was due to expire in June 2026. The only question was when, and how, his departure would be made official.

Brazil's hurry to have a new coach in place led to a bizarre scenario where the Brazilian Football Confederation announced Ancelotti's exit on May 12, almost two weeks before the club did. It made for an awkward situation for Ancelotti; he handled it as best he could.

"When you arrive at Real Madrid, you know that one day it's over," he said, a day after CBF had made his signing public. "I couldn't be Real Madrid coach forever. ... It might be that the club needs fresh impetus. There's no need for drama. ... Maybe it was the time for a change."

Ancelotti has mocked suggestions that taking a tougher approach with his players might have yielded different results. "I've got angry [with the players] a lot this season, but for me it's about having a relationship on the same level, and that means respecting, and being respected," he said in April. "People have said 'use the whip' more. But I can't do that. You'd have to sign another coach. For me, that isn't the way."

His reputation won't suffer because of what happened this season; if anything, the predictably dignified manner in which he has handled his farewell has added to it. "People can have their opinion -- positive or negative -- of me as a coach," he said on Friday. "But I'd rather be remembered as a good person."