The agent of Napoli defender Elseid Hysaj has hit out at Carlo Ancelotti, claiming he “annihilated” his client, as reported by Mail Online.
The Albania international full-back was in and out of the team under Carlo Ancelotti this season, before the Italian boss was sacked by club president Aurelio De Laurentiis on December 10.
Since then, the 26-year old has only missed two Serie A games, playing much more consistently at the San Paolo under Gennaro Gattuso.
Now Hysaj’s agent, Mario Giuffredi, has hit out at Ancelotti, telling Radio Punto Nuovo, as translated by Mail Online, that the Italian destroyed his self-esteem. Giuffredi said:
Ancelotti had destroyed his self-esteem. He had taken away all his security.
He didn’t do well at Napoli, otherwise he wouldn’t have been sacked. I prefer not to talk about the relationship between the coach and the players, but many players have been annihilated by Ancelotti.
Read Everton Verdict
It’s always interesting to speculate how managers and players get on behind closed doors, and this very much seems like Ancelotti and Hysaj didn’t get on.
Chelsea offered Napoli a whopping £43 million for the Albanian full-back in the summer of 2018, so the defender has no shortage of quality, but for whatever reason he couldn’t seem to find his place under Ancelotti.
This is the first time we’ve heard about Ancelotti seemingly be detrimentally destructive to a player’s self-confidence, so it is difficult to speculate on why that might have been the case, if it is indeed more than a simple excuse for poor form.
While Hysaj might not have prospered under Ancelotti in Naples, others were able to find form playing for the Italian. Dries Mertens scored 16 goals and assisted 10 more in Serie A last season, while Arkadiusz Milik scored 17 goals. Of course, not every player can play in every game and ultimately some are always going to be left unsatisfied.
