Carlo Ancelotti may want Jerome Boateng for Napoli

In what would be an odd twist, former Bayern Munich coach Carlo Ancelotti may be looking to bring one of his old center backs to Naples per a report by Calciomercato covered by AZ.

Enter Jerome Boateng:

Carlo Ancelotti—new coach of SSC Napoli—has apparently informed his current employer of his desire to lure former protégé Jérôme Boateng to Serie A.

Boateng, who has waffled on his commitment to Bayern several times over the past few weeks, could be interested . . . or maybe he isn’t? What day is today? Anyway, an Ancelotti-Boateng marriage would seem highly unlikely given that Boateng was one of the “Party of Five” that was benched for the first leg of the tie with Paris Saint-Germain during the Champions League group stage, not to mention his criticism of Ancelotti’s style of training.

The 29-year-old world champion—currently spending time with the German national team in the training camp in Eppan / South Tyrol—had blamed Jupp Heynckes’s predecessor (Ancelotti) for a significant part of his form crisis. Training under the Italian had been “different from what we knew before,” said Boateng in November last year.

Boateng himself gave an account of the astonishment in the locker room when Ancelotti benched him and the others:

It was very strange. We sat in the meeting room and five of us were told an hour and a half before the game, suddenly and without any explanation, that we would not play.

Boateng should at least be considered to be on the “Flight Risk” portion of Bayern’s roster, given his back and forth statements about his plans for next season. Granted, he can’t go anywhere without the blessing of Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoeneß, but Bayern has Mats Hummels, Niklas Süle, and Lars Lukas Mai already in the fold and is also reportedly competing for the services of Dutch wunderkind Matthijs De Ligt, VfB Stuttgart’s Benjamin Pavard, and Hoffenheim’s Kevin Vogt on the transfer market.