For what seemed his whole career, Claudio Ranieri was destined to be no more than “a nearly man”.
The Italian was a manager capable of building great squads, but never managing to get them over the finishing line when it mattered. At Valencia, he constructed a team worthy of challenging Real Madrid and Barcelona at the summit of La Liga; at Chelsea he laid the foundations of arguably the greatest Premier League club of the last decade, he reconstructed a Juventus side plunged into Serie B and with Monaco he spearheaded their rise back to the top of the French game.
Not a bad CV, but one distinctly lacking in silverware. One Coppa Italia, a Copa del Rey and a European Super Cup were about all he had to show for himself in terms of major honours before he moved to Leicester amid much derision from the UK media. It was at the King Power Stadium, however, he wrote his name in the book of legends.
The ascent of the Foxes from a side considered certainties for relegation at the beginning of the season to champions at the end will forever be remembered as one of the great sporting fairy tales. Not only was the squad dismissed as a hotchpotch of journeymen, the manager was, in the eyes of many, the very manifestation of a loveable loser destined to stumble when it most counted.
Instead, he proved to be the orchestrator of a story so remarkable, it would have been thrown in the bucket by filmmakers for being too unrealistic.
End of the romance
On Thursday, that great romance ended when Ranieri was shamefully sacked by Leicester. He should have had a job for life at the Foxes; instead, he was left to pick a knife from his back.
Great upsets have become increasingly rare at the top level of football. Resources are simply too concentrated among the top teams to make them plausible on a regular basis. Big teams pay the most money, stockpile the best players and reap the rewards as such.
Leicester, having only narrowly avoided relegation on the final day of the previous campaign, offered little such financial strength and had been cobbled together with a string of moneyball misfits. No-one could have predicted the success of Jamie Vardy, a striker wrought from obscurity, or the impact that Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante would have – they were players “too small or too slow for other clubs”.
No-one, that is, aside from Ranieri, who explained: “When I arrived my first day of training and I saw the quality of these players, I knew how good they could be.”
Branded ‘the Tinkerman’ in his previous roles for his apparent love of changing his team, Ranieri shed that reputation with Leicester. He showed himself a pragmatist in the best tradition of Italian coaches. With a little luck on the injury front, he named a consistent starting XI, and used a relatively simple tactical approach that was executed to perfection over the campaign.
His motivational methods were unusual. After achieving a clean sheet against Crystal Palace, their first of the season, he took his squad to a pizzeria. Ranieri, however, made the players make their own pizzas, telling them that they had to work for everything they got.
“This is a small club that is showing the world what can be achieved through spirit and determination. Twenty-six players. Twenty-six different brains. But one heart,” Ranieri told the Players’ Lounge.
By the time this Leicester team were given the respect they deserved, they had attained a lead at the top of the table that the traditional ‘big six’, all of whom seemed intent on shooting themselves in the foot on a regular basis, were unable to bridge.
When he took the job, Ranieri chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha told him: “Claudio, this is a very important year for the club. It is very important for us to stay in the Premier League. We have to stay safe.”
Forty points was the target. Survival. That expectation was smashed.
The Foxes punched well above their weight for a heady 12 months but were unable to sustain that standard. Of course, they couldn’t, it was an impossible task. The set-up they had used only weeks earlier had suddenly become outdated due to their newfound status and respect as champions, while simple mathematics dictated that their squad could not continue to excel itself against comparative Goliaths on a weekly basis.
Jamie Carragher expressed it as well as anyone with a simple tweet:
Ironically for a man so used to finishing second, he was brutally punished for his success. Leicester had no right to expect anything but a relegation battle last term, just as they should not have expected to regain the title this time around. Their board has taken their title win horribly out of context.
Now they lie just one place above the relegation zone in 17th – exactly the spot the Italian found them in when he took charge in the summer of 2015. Relegation haunts them, yet their previous boss boasted a Premier League win percent that is only bettered by Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Rafael Benitez and Jose Mourinho – a truly illustrious group.
Ranieri is a survivor, though. Aged 65, he is used to setbacks, and his philosophy is a strong one: “You just need to keep an open mind, an open heart, a full battery, and run free.”
Don’t feel sorry for him, his legend is already achieved; it is the Leicester fairy tale we should mourn for.
