Sunday 26 February 2017

Claudio Ranieri: Title Winner, Tinkerman and The Calmest Manager Of All-Time



Late on Thursday 23rd February, Leicester City announced that they'd parted ways with manager Claudio Ranieri.



The Footballing World was shocked at the announcement. Not due to the Foxes being one point above the relegation zone but because nine months ago, the Italian did the impossible and won the Premier League with a team tipped for relegation.



The most liked manager in all of Football bows out of the Premier League as a title winner but it wasn't always like that.

Back in July 2015 when Ranieri was appointed manager at the King Power stadium, many questioned the decision to put a man who had once lost to the Faroe Islands, when he was manager of Greece, in charge of a Premier League club.

Then 10 months later, the guy who had been nicknamed 'Tinkerman' due to his continuous team changes won Leicester their first-ever top flight title win and fantastically defeating the 5000/1 odds that the bookies had set for Leicester winning the league at the start of the 2015/16 season.

Reality then creeped back in.

With N'Golo Kante gone to Chelsea for £32 million, Leicester lost their drive and determination to put in a decent defence of their title. They were never going to win back-to-back titles but they were expected to at leaset finish in the top half of the table.

This never happened and the brilliant memories of last season have been tainted by a sense of sheer disappointment of the players that were heroes last May.


Gone are the memories of Jamie Vardy breaking Rudd Van Nistelrooy's record of scoring in 10 consecutive Premier League games, gone are the memories of Mahrez running riot at the Etihad and gone is the commitment to keep a clean sheet in order to get a pizza.


So was it right that Ranieri was dismissed? If you take away the fact that he won the Premier League last season, then it makes sense.

The champions slipped into the relegation zone yesterday after Crystal Palace bear Middlesbrough 1-0. They haven't scored in the league in 2017 and have only won one in their last 10 league matches.

What is so hard for fans and journalists alike is that the club wouldn't stick with a man that did the impossible and made the thought of relegation reserved for the Nigel Pearson era.




Maybe Ranieri should have retired once he won the league because it wouldn't have gotten any better.

However, you can't blame the 65 year old staying to manage in the Champions League against teams such as Club Brugge, Copenhagen, Porto and Sevilla after the up and down career that he's had.

Another factor in all of this is the felling that this is an example of corporations taking the sentiment out of Football and widening the gap between what the majority of fans want and what owners want.







It's mad to think Leicester City are a 1-0 win away from the Champions League quarter-finals and yet the man who made them household names has been shown the door.

There were rumours that some players told the chairman that what Ranieri was doing wasn't working and regardless of whether it's true or not, how can Leicester be doing so well in one competition (Champions League) and doing horrendous in another (Premier League)?.






The transition from last season when the neutrals were rooting for them to win the league to now were many want them to get relegated is unreal.

The whole situation has left a bad taste in everyone's mouths and it's a shame that Ranieri, a man who said for months last season that he was taking it as it came, said that his dream had died on Thursday.




As Leicester start the post Ranieri era against Liverpool tomorrow at the King Power stadium, the players have 13 games to retain their Premier League status.

They'll already become the worst title defenders in English top flight history, after Chelsea's embarrassing 10th finish last season, but will they retain their top-flight status? Will they avoid the drop for the second time in three years? It doesn't seem likely...








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