 "Claudio Ranieri")
Not quite fearing the repercussions if things turned out otherwise, an article titled 'Claudio Ranieri: the anti-Pearson…and the wrong man for Leicester City?' was published in The Guardian in July of last year. (Pearson refers to Nigel Pearson, Leicester City's manager before Ranieri)
The writer of the article wasn't entirely in the wrong: Ranieri's previous job as the coach of the Greek national team ended in disaster as they managed to pick up just one point from four games in their Euro 2016 qualifying campaign. The president of the Greek Football Federation apologised to the fans for appointing him.
Actually, Ranieri's CV as a manager is fairly impressive, having been at the helm of some of Europe's biggest clubs such as Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Chelsea, Roma, Juventus and Inter Milan. Yet there was always an asterisk against his career. In his three decades of being a football manager, he had never won a league title despite working at the biggest clubs.
Although always known as a good manager, he unfortunately got typecast as someone who could never win, whatever the resources put at his disposal. That said, he set strong foundations: the Chelsea team that won the English Premier League in 2004-05 and 2005-06 comprised of many players who had played under or were handpicked by Ranieri when he was the manager. He was also responsible for making Valencia a competitive side in his tenure between 1997 and 1999. Within three years, they went on to become La Liga champions and repeated the triumph two seasons later.
It is indeed ironical that the man who has had the opportunity to work with some formidable teams over the years would eventually break his hoodoo of never winning a league title under the most extraordinary circumstances. Leicester City's march to the English Premier League title, which was sealed earlier this week, is without doubt one of the greatest sporting fairytales of all times. The team was not even playing top-level football till 2014-15, having spent a decade outside the English Premier League. The more one thinks of the Leicester City story, the more fascinating it begins to sound.
As the amazing triumph of Leicester City still begins to sink in, one goes back to the start of the season, when asked what his primary aim was, Ranieri said it was reaching 40 points and survival. They have achieved nearly double that total with two games left to play, and have become only the second team outside the English superpowers, i.e. Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City, to win the English Premier League, the other being Blackburn Rovers in 1995. Yet, with the massive discrepancy in transfer fees and wages between the bigger teams and the 'Leicesters' of the league nowadays, their title is arguably unparalleled in modern sports history.
In a certain irony, Ranieri's greatest triumph comes the very same year that Jose Mourinho has had the worst season of his career as manager at Chelsea. Just to refresh our memory, Ranieri was the manager of Chelsea when Roman Abrahamovich bought the club in 2003, and was sacked a year later, with Mourinho taking over and winning the league title in his first two seasons.
The lesson of the Ranieri story at Leicester is that winning is a matter of luck as it is of anything else. For 30 years, he never came first, but when success came his way, it came in a manner which would make him unforgettable.
