Former Chelsea and Real Madrid head coach who is now Brazil manager Carlo Ancelotti has been sentenced to a year in prison. The sentence was passed by a Spanish court for tax evasion, but he will not have to serve time in jail.
The former Everton manager was accused of failing to pay 1m euros (£830,000) in tax on his salary during his first spell Real Madrid from 2013 to 2015. Carlo Ancelotti will avoid prison but he have to pay a fine of 386,361.93 euros (£333,045.92).
Under Spanish law, any sentence under two years for a non-violent crime rarely requires a defendant without previous convictions to serve jail time. Earlier this year, Ancelotti said he “never thought about committing fraud” as he testified in court.
He said he was offered a net salary of 6m euros (£5.1m) by Real Madrid and that he left the structure of it to his financial advisers. The manager also said: “I thought it was quite normal because at that time all the players and the previous coach had [done the same].”
Ancelotti paid back the debt in full in December 2021. He is not the first or only sports person to go through this as Lionel Messi had also gone through it. When Messi was with Barcelona, he was given a 21-month prison sentence in 2017, but this punishment was then reduced to a fine of 252,000 euros, with no jail term attached.
Also, Real striker Cristiano Ronaldo accepted an 18.8m euro fine in 2019. Jose Mourinho also fell this in his term with Real Madrid as he paid 2.2m euros.
