Brazil coach Ancelotti gets 1-year sentence in Spain tax case

A Madrid court on Wednesday handed down a one-year prison sentence and a €386,000 ($452,000) fine to Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti for failing to pay tax on his image rights revenues when he was Real Madrid manager in 2014, the court said in a statement.

Under Spanish law any sentence under two years for a nonviolent crime rarely requires a defendant without previous convictions to serve jail time. State prosecutors sought a prison sentence of up to four years and nine months on two counts of tax fraud.

Ancelotti, who managed Real Madrid from 2013 to 2015 and between 2021 and 2025, was cleared of a similar charge for 2015, as the court could not prove he had stayed long enough in Spain to incur tax liabilities, the court added. He moved to London after Real Madrid sacked him in May 2015.

A staffer in Ancelotti’s team told The Associated Press that his lawyers welcomed the court’s decision. The staffer spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Brazil’s football confederation has not publicly commented on the court’s ruling.

Spanish prosecutors accused Ancelotti of defrauding the state of €1 million ($1 million) in 2014 and 2015.

In March 2024, they accused Ancelotti of having used shell companies to hide his true earnings. Prosecutors claimed Ancelotti, for example, used one company that lacked “any real [economic] activity” in the Virgin Islands as part of an alleged scheme.

Ancelotti is the latest in a string of high-profile players and coaches to be investigated by Spanish tax authorities.

Many cases — including those of leading players such as Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Spain’s Diego Costa — were settled out of court, with large fines paid.

In 2023, however, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of former Bayer Leverkusen and now Real Madrid coach Xabi Alonso after he refused to settle and defended his innocence.

Ancelotti, who turned 66 last month, is one of football’s most successful coaches. He is the only coach to have won the Champions League five times, three with Madrid and twice with AC Milan, and the only coach to have won domestic league titles in England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.

Ancelotti left his second stint at Real Madrid in May to take over Brazil’s national team.

Information from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report.