Carlo Ancelotti’s tangled love life

Do British football followers have another Sven-Goran Eriksson on their hands? Not in terms of the Swede's talents - or lack of - as a manager of England and then Manchester City, but his tangled love life?

It seems the Italian Carlo Ancelotti, on his way from AC Milan to take over at Chelsea FC on a salary of £6.5m a year, will arrive in London with a tumultuous love affair in his wake.

About to celebrate his 50th birthday, the Italian has in the space of months been dumped by both his wife Luisa Ancelotti and his mistress Marina Cretu.

Luisa left him in October - or relegated him th the subs' bench as he put it at the time in a magazine interview - after 25 years of marriage. She said she was fed up with his hectic lifestyle, which involved shuttling between the couple's family home in Reggiolo near Parma and his club, AC Milan.

But the real reason turned out to be his affair with Marina Cretu, a 31-year-old from Bucharest who was working in television in Modena. By all accounts, Ancelotti played the old one-two deftly: first the 'my wife doesn't understand me any more' speech and then the promise of a job in the press office at Milan for Marina so they could be closer together.

Marina, "infatuated" with Carlo according to her work colleagues in Modena, duly dumped her boyfriend and moved to Milan where she became a regular at club functions.

But within three months, Marina had given him the heave-ho, claiming Ancelotti had lied to her that he was going out with his children when he had actually been with his wife. She is now back in Bucharest, apparently resisting his calls for a reconciliation.

Meanwhile, Sven - whose relationship with Nancy Dell'Olio was punctuated with headline-grabbing affairs with TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson and Football Association secretary Faria Alam during his time as England manager - could soon be back in Britain managing Portsmouth. The celebrity mags can prepare for a field day. ·