From The Athletic
Even though it was Leicester City who made the call to Claudio Ranieri, asking him to leave his family holiday in the south of Italy to fly immediately to London for talks, it was the experienced Italian coach who felt like he still needed to convince to chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha he was the man for the job.
Khun Vichai wasn’t the only person who may have felt they needed convincing. After all, Ranieri’s last role, as manager of Greece, had lasted just four games and included a defeat to the Faroe Islands.
“It all happened very quickly, in the space of a day,” Ranieri, now manager of Sampdoria, tells The Athletic. “I was on holiday in the south of Italy and the hardest thing was getting to London. There were no direct flights and I was even late to meet the president (Khun Vichai).
“We chatted a little, discussed a few things and then by the end of it I felt like I’d convinced him. The president then got talking to my agent about my contract and the following day I was boarding a flight to meet up with the team at our pre-season training camp in Austria.
“I could understand public opinion and that people were expecting Leicester to go with a different manager, maybe a younger guy, but I didn’t pay too much attention to what the media were saying because when I believe in a project I throw myself totally into my work.
“If you’re a coach or a footballer you know that all that really matters happens on the pitch.”
Part of that public perception was born from his days as manager of Chelsea when he was known as The Tinkerman because he frequently changed his side and tactics, but he didn’t live up to that reputation at Leicester.
“While it’s true it all happened very quickly, I already knew who Leicester were and what they were about,” he says. “I’ve always followed English football. I knew the club was coming off three really good seasons. The first two were about getting Leicester back into the Premier League and the third was about staying up and they did so playing some splendid football in the final month of the season.
“Leicester already had my idea of playing football in its DNA: the team gave everything and fought for every single ball.
“As soon as I got to Austria I knew I had a very good team on my hands. Everyone bought into what we were doing. There was desire and determination, hope as well so I looked at the team and came to the conclusion there wasn’t any need for an overhaul. All we needed to do was touch up one or two things and apply my tactical ideas.
“There was already a strong foundation on which I could reproduce my ideas on how the game should be played, which have always had English football as their inspiration. Thanks to Leicester I got to go back to the place where I think I got the best out of myself as a coach.
“I began studying Leicester’s games from the season before as well as individual performances of the players. I wanted to play Jamie Vardy with more continuity. I switched the side Marc Albrighton was playing on and sorted Riyad Mahrez out on the right.
“Then as the days go by and you train the team more and more, you start to find out things. Take Leo Ulloa for example. He had been prolific the previous season but was finding it hard to rediscover his form. This led me to play Vardy and Shinji Okazaki up front in the opening games of the season because they were fast and had stamina.”
Ironically, Ranieri himself needed convincing about one particular signing, N’Golo Kante. Head of recruitment Steve Walsh would say Kante’s name whenever he saw Ranieri in those first few weeks, and Ranieri initially played the midfielder out of position, but he became integral to Ranieri’s team.
“The more you get to take training the more you really get to know the players down to the smallest details,” he adds. “For example, little by little, Danny Simpson started to hit form.
“Kante was like a little scooter who never stopped. I just had to find a way of getting him into the team. This is how Leicester came together for the rest of the season.”
If Kante was his scooter in midfield, Vardy became the spearhead to Ranieri’s attack as he broke Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Premier League record by scoring in 11 consecutive games.
“It was a beautiful thing,” Ranieri recalls. “At one point I told the team, ‘We’ve got to have go at winning the league but we also have to help Jamie beat that record because he’ll make history for himself and for the team.’
“I don’t like comparing all the players that I’ve been lucky enough to coach, every player has their own story to tell, a club they’re associated with and at Leicester, Vardy was the spearhead at the point of our arrows.”
Those arrows were raining down on stunned Premier League opponents as Leicester rose to the summit of the Premier League, playing Ranieri’s brand of fearless football. Ranieri was the man in charge, but he also wanted his players to take responsibility themselves.
“Before every game I used to say: ‘Guys let’s go play our football and be fearless, we’ve got to disrupt the opposition and hit them with our weapons’,” he says. “Tactics have always been very important for me, but I knew that in England it couldn’t be like Italy, so I tried to strike a balance, managing the team in such a way that the lads talked about things among themselves and that way they got to know each other better and better.”
Survival may have been the main goal that season, after the Great Escape of the previous campaign, but while Ranieri repeated his 40-point mantra publicly, privately he wanted his players to start to believe the impossible was possible.
“I had this mantra that we had to get to 40 points and stay up because that’s what the president had asked me to do after the worries of the previous season,” he says. “Then I could clearly see that whenever we played the top sides they were struggling against us.
“There was a period around Christmas time when Mahrez came up to me and said: ‘Coach, what do you reckon we’re capable of?’ All I did was smile and he said: ‘You already know’.” And it was true.”
That style of man-management was never more effective than after one of only three defeats his side suffered that season, when Danny Welbeck struck a last-minute winner for Arsenal at the Emirates. Ranieri gave the entire squad the week off.
“I’ve always asked my teams to give everything: ‘You go out on the pitch, I don’t care who you’re playing against, you need to give everything,’” Ranieri says. “That way when the final whistle goes and you head back into the dressing room you can do so with your head held high.
“Before one of the international breaks we had a really tough set of fixtures coming up. We had to play Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal. Joking around with the players I was saying: ‘Look, for every point you manage to take off them, you get a day off.’ ‘What if we win them all?’ Vardy said. And I replied: ‘If you get nine points I’ll give you the entire week off. How about that?’
“We beat Liverpool and Manchester City. Then came Arsenal. We were 1-0 up but played the final half-hour with 10 men and only lost in stoppage time. As soon as the players got back in the dressing room I said: ‘I’ve always asked you to give your all out there and you gave your all today. As far as I’m concerned you won that game, so I’m giving you the week off. In my mind it’s as if we’ve taken maximum points.’”
The move worked as Leicester won seven and drew three of their next ten games to inch towards an incredible title triumph. After a draw at Old Trafford, title rivals Tottenham Hotspur had to beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge to keep the race alive.
Ranieri’s backroom team gathered at his house to watch the game — although not in the same room.
“I had gone to see my mother in Rome and, in order to get back in time, the president laid on his private jet so I must have got home around half an hour before the game kicked off,” Ranieri recalls. “I watched it at home with my wife and backroom staff. You know what the beautiful thing was? I watched it on Italian TV while the others watched it on English TV in the kitchen.
“There was a delay, so at full time I could hear all this shouting coming from the kitchen but I had to still wait for the game to finish just to be sure… We made a toast and then I went to bed. The rest of my staff went into the city centre to party with the fans.”
That party went on for days. Ranieri had been contacted by Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli earlier in the season and was teed up to sing at what turned out to be the title crowning against Everton.
“Bocelli called me before Easter. He told me he had this feeling something extraordinary was happening and he wanted to come and sing for us. When Bocelli’s agents and Leicester’s club secretary settled on a date we hadn’t yet won the league and didn’t know if and when we would win the title.
“In the end, it happened on the exact same day we were crowned champions.”
There was a giant victory celebration in Victoria Park where Leicester rockers Kasabian – a band Ranieri referenced in one of his early press conferences to show he had done his homework on the city – serenaded 70,000 jubilant Leicester fans.
In Bangkok, an estimated one million people took to the streets to acknowledge the incredible achievement of Thai-owned Leicester City.
“The celebrations were bellissime, unforgettable,” Ranieri says. “It was all so wonderful. You could feel all of England and the entire world wanted to be a part of our success.
“I remember loads of Italians coming to Leicester, ticketless, just to be part of a small club celebrating its triumph over the biggest teams in England. It was a magical year for everybody.”
Ranieri says he had a wonderful experience working with the club’s owners and chief executive Susan Whelan, regardless of his sacking the next season when his side struggled to juggle the demands of a title defence and a Champions League campaign.
After the tragic passing of Khun Vichai in 2018, Ranieri returned to King Power Stadium to pay his respects to a man he still holds dear.
“It was a magnificent experience at Leicester,” says Ranieri. “They were splendid people. At every opportunity the president and Khun Top always passed on their positivity, serenity and encouragement. As for Susan, I always remember her smiling.
“The president was the most important person behind the scenes to the title win, without a shadow of a doubt. For instance, I remember one thing that would never happen in Italy. In both my years at Leicester, on my birthday he came into the dressing room 15 minutes before kick-off with this enormous cake. It was always pure joy with the president.”
Asked what we would say to Khun Vichai now, Ranieri’s poignant reply sums up how every Leicester fan still feels about that season.
“Grazie, Presidente, for allowing me to live the most wonderful dream.”
Even though it was Leicester City who made the call to Claudio Ranieri, asking him to leave his family holiday in the south of Italy to fly immediately to London for talks, it was the experienced Italian coach who felt like he still needed to convince to chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha he was the man for the job.
Khun Vichai wasn’t the only person who may have felt they needed convincing. After all, Ranieri’s last role, as manager of Greece, had lasted just four games and included a defeat to the Faroe Islands.
“It all happened very quickly, in the space of a day,” Ranieri, now manager of Sampdoria, tells The Athletic. “I was on holiday in the south of Italy and the hardest thing was getting to London. There were no direct flights and I was even late to meet the president (Khun Vichai).
“We chatted a little, discussed a few things and then by the end of it I felt like I’d convinced him. The president then got talking to my agent about my contract and the following day I was boarding a flight to meet up with the team at our pre-season training camp in Austria.
“I could understand public opinion and that people were expecting Leicester to go with a different manager, maybe a younger guy, but I didn’t pay too much attention to what the media were saying because when I believe in a project I throw myself totally into my work.
“If you’re a coach or a footballer you know that all that really matters happens on the pitch.”
Part of that public perception was born from his days as manager of Chelsea when he was known as The Tinkerman because he frequently changed his side and tactics, but he didn’t live up to that reputation at Leicester.
“While it’s true it all happened very quickly, I already knew who Leicester were and what they were about,” he says. “I’ve always followed English football. I knew the club was coming off three really good seasons. The first two were about getting Leicester back into the Premier League and the third was about staying up and they did so playing some splendid football in the final month of the season.
“Leicester already had my idea of playing football in its DNA: the team gave everything and fought for every single ball.
“As soon as I got to Austria I knew I had a very good team on my hands. Everyone bought into what we were doing. There was desire and determination, hope as well so I looked at the team and came to the conclusion there wasn’t any need for an overhaul. All we needed to do was touch up one or two things and apply my tactical ideas.
“There was already a strong foundation on which I could reproduce my ideas on how the game should be played, which have always had English football as their inspiration. Thanks to Leicester I got to go back to the place where I think I got the best out of myself as a coach.
“I began studying Leicester’s games from the season before as well as individual performances of the players. I wanted to play Jamie Vardy with more continuity. I switched the side Marc Albrighton was playing on and sorted Riyad Mahrez out on the right.
“Then as the days go by and you train the team more and more, you start to find out things. Take Leo Ulloa for example. He had been prolific the previous season but was finding it hard to rediscover his form. This led me to play Vardy and Shinji Okazaki up front in the opening games of the season because they were fast and had stamina.”
Ironically, Ranieri himself needed convincing about one particular signing, N’Golo Kante. Head of recruitment Steve Walsh would say Kante’s name whenever he saw Ranieri in those first few weeks, and Ranieri initially played the midfielder out of position, but he became integral to Ranieri’s team.
“The more you get to take training the more you really get to know the players down to the smallest details,” he adds. “For example, little by little, Danny Simpson started to hit form.
“Kante was like a little scooter who never stopped. I just had to find a way of getting him into the team. This is how Leicester came together for the rest of the season.”
If Kante was his scooter in midfield, Vardy became the spearhead to Ranieri’s attack as he broke Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Premier League record by scoring in 11 consecutive games.
“It was a beautiful thing,” Ranieri recalls. “At one point I told the team, ‘We’ve got to have go at winning the league but we also have to help Jamie beat that record because he’ll make history for himself and for the team.’
“I don’t like comparing all the players that I’ve been lucky enough to coach, every player has their own story to tell, a club they’re associated with and at Leicester, Vardy was the spearhead at the point of our arrows.”
Those arrows were raining down on stunned Premier League opponents as Leicester rose to the summit of the Premier League, playing Ranieri’s brand of fearless football. Ranieri was the man in charge, but he also wanted his players to take responsibility themselves.
“Before every game I used to say: ‘Guys let’s go play our football and be fearless, we’ve got to disrupt the opposition and hit them with our weapons’,” he says. “Tactics have always been very important for me, but I knew that in England it couldn’t be like Italy, so I tried to strike a balance, managing the team in such a way that the lads talked about things among themselves and that way they got to know each other better and better.”
Survival may have been the main goal that season, after the Great Escape of the previous campaign, but while Ranieri repeated his 40-point mantra publicly, privately he wanted his players to start to believe the impossible was possible.
“I had this mantra that we had to get to 40 points and stay up because that’s what the president had asked me to do after the worries of the previous season,” he says. “Then I could clearly see that whenever we played the top sides they were struggling against us.
“There was a period around Christmas time when Mahrez came up to me and said: ‘Coach, what do you reckon we’re capable of?’ All I did was smile and he said: ‘You already know’.” And it was true.”
That style of man-management was never more effective than after one of only three defeats his side suffered that season, when Danny Welbeck struck a last-minute winner for Arsenal at the Emirates. Ranieri gave the entire squad the week off.
“I’ve always asked my teams to give everything: ‘You go out on the pitch, I don’t care who you’re playing against, you need to give everything,’” Ranieri says. “That way when the final whistle goes and you head back into the dressing room you can do so with your head held high.
“Before one of the international breaks we had a really tough set of fixtures coming up. We had to play Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal. Joking around with the players I was saying: ‘Look, for every point you manage to take off them, you get a day off.’ ‘What if we win them all?’ Vardy said. And I replied: ‘If you get nine points I’ll give you the entire week off. How about that?’
“We beat Liverpool and Manchester City. Then came Arsenal. We were 1-0 up but played the final half-hour with 10 men and only lost in stoppage time. As soon as the players got back in the dressing room I said: ‘I’ve always asked you to give your all out there and you gave your all today. As far as I’m concerned you won that game, so I’m giving you the week off. In my mind it’s as if we’ve taken maximum points.’”
The move worked as Leicester won seven and drew three of their next ten games to inch towards an incredible title triumph. After a draw at Old Trafford, title rivals Tottenham Hotspur had to beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge to keep the race alive.
Ranieri’s backroom team gathered at his house to watch the game — although not in the same room.
“I had gone to see my mother in Rome and, in order to get back in time, the president laid on his private jet so I must have got home around half an hour before the game kicked off,” Ranieri recalls. “I watched it at home with my wife and backroom staff. You know what the beautiful thing was? I watched it on Italian TV while the others watched it on English TV in the kitchen.
“There was a delay, so at full time I could hear all this shouting coming from the kitchen but I had to still wait for the game to finish just to be sure… We made a toast and then I went to bed. The rest of my staff went into the city centre to party with the fans.”
That party went on for days. Ranieri had been contacted by Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli earlier in the season and was teed up to sing at what turned out to be the title crowning against Everton.
“Bocelli called me before Easter. He told me he had this feeling something extraordinary was happening and he wanted to come and sing for us. When Bocelli’s agents and Leicester’s club secretary settled on a date we hadn’t yet won the league and didn’t know if and when we would win the title.
“In the end, it happened on the exact same day we were crowned champions.”
There was a giant victory celebration in Victoria Park where Leicester rockers Kasabian – a band Ranieri referenced in one of his early press conferences to show he had done his homework on the city – serenaded 70,000 jubilant Leicester fans.
In Bangkok, an estimated one million people took to the streets to acknowledge the incredible achievement of Thai-owned Leicester City.
“The celebrations were bellissime, unforgettable,” Ranieri says. “It was all so wonderful. You could feel all of England and the entire world wanted to be a part of our success.
“I remember loads of Italians coming to Leicester, ticketless, just to be part of a small club celebrating its triumph over the biggest teams in England. It was a magical year for everybody.”
Ranieri says he had a wonderful experience working with the club’s owners and chief executive Susan Whelan, regardless of his sacking the next season when his side struggled to juggle the demands of a title defence and a Champions League campaign.
After the tragic passing of Khun Vichai in 2018, Ranieri returned to King Power Stadium to pay his respects to a man he still holds dear.
“It was a magnificent experience at Leicester,” says Ranieri. “They were splendid people. At every opportunity the president and Khun Top always passed on their positivity, serenity and encouragement. As for Susan, I always remember her smiling.
“The president was the most important person behind the scenes to the title win, without a shadow of a doubt. For instance, I remember one thing that would never happen in Italy. In both my years at Leicester, on my birthday he came into the dressing room 15 minutes before kick-off with this enormous cake. It was always pure joy with the president.”
Asked what we would say to Khun Vichai now, Ranieri’s poignant reply sums up how every Leicester fan still feels about that season.
“Grazie, Presidente, for allowing me to live the most wonderful dream.”
