I LOVE CLAUDIO.

[cityfanlee23]

This thread is still going   testament to what this man has done for us.

[Bob Weasel Fox]

This thread is still going testament to what this man has done for us.

He is great isn't he

Upwards and onwards

Dilly Ding Dilly Dong man

[cityfanlee23]

He is great isn't he

Upwards and onwards

Dilly Ding Dilly Dong man

 

I hope he is here for another 3 years atleast (unless we do a complete U-Turn of course) 

even if he gets us top 6 next season it's a massive achievement and I'm seriously beginning to think he can push us to the next level as a club and make us attractive to big players and managers (not big names so to speak but the pulling ability to be able to take young future stars from rival clubs)

 

Who knows, if he gives us a few seasons of success, on his retirement we could be attracting top managers to us and be a european club? 

Don't stop dreaming.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

Claudio: The Eighth Wonder Of The Modern World. 

This gentle man in smart attire,

Has set our football club on fire,

The wealthy clubs have fallen down,

To Leicester went the golden crown.

Our name is known now  far and wide,

And now we have a burning pride,

We are Leicester to the day we die,

Our heads to hold forever high.

[Izzy]

I've said it before but I'll say it again - he's been an absolute class act for us since day 1. He got the players and press on side from the beginning, and endeared himself to the fans and media straight away with his humble and understated approach. Behind the 'nice guy' exterior I reckon there's a man with a burning passion and desire to win which has translated onto the pitch through our team. I really can't fault him for ANYTHING this season, and he'll win MOTY by a country mile - and deservedly so. It was a match made in heaven, and all the stars were aligned this season. I'm genuinely chuffed for him as a bloke too. Good for him 

[Bob Weasel Fox]

I hope he is here for another 3 years atleast (unless we do a complete U-Turn of course)

even if he gets us top 6 next season it's a massive achievement and I'm seriously beginning to think he can push us to the next level as a club and make us attractive to big players and managers (not big names so to speak but the pulling ability to be able to take young future stars from rival clubs)

Who knows, if he gives us a few seasons of success, on his retirement we could be attracting top managers to us and be a european club?

Don't stop dreaming.

Exactly right bud

He has told us to keep dreaming

I'm still dreaming

It's utterly staggering what he has already achieved

More to come aswell I think

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

I trust he will have a memorable day today. 

[Jordan]

Claudio Ranieri: 2015/16 Barclays Premier League Manager of the Season and 2015/16 LMA Managers' Manager of the Year.

[lifted*fox]

A true hero. Blessy up yourself Ranieri. X

[casablancas]

Can we update the title to England his premier league manager of the year award? Throughly deserved and he will forever be a legend and in our hearts and minds

[Bazly]

Claudio just named manager of the season. No real surprise there.

[Bob Weasel Fox]

Claudio Ranieri: 2015/16 Barclays Premier League Manager of the Season and 2015/16 LMA Managers' Manager of the Year.

Thoroughly deserved

[The Doctor]

Only the second non British manager to win it after Arsene Wenger according to the news, thought Jose had won it but still, what an achievement.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

Claudio: The Eighth Wonder Of The Modern World. 

This gentle man in smart attire,

Has set our football club on fire,

The wealthy clubs have fallen down,

To Leicester went the golden crown.

Our name is known now  far and wide,

And now we have a burning pride,

We are Leicester to the day we die,

Our heads to hold forever high.

Thousands turned out to applaud the team,

A perfect response to the well earned dream,

Father, mother, sister, daughter, and son ,

Turned out to see the cup the Foxes won,

The sun shone down, the crowds were loud,

And the whole of Leicester felt so proud,

Now whenever you break into song,

Sing" Dilly Ding" and "Dilly Dong"

The trophy we won is very dear,

And Claudio's "Manager of the Year".

As fans grow old through passing years

Remember all this with happy tears.

[MC Prussian]

Only the second non British manager to win it after Arsene Wenger according to the news, thought Jose had won it but still, what an achievement.

 

I was equally baffled by the absence of non-British or non-Irish managers on that list. You'd think that in 23 years of PL football and with all that foreign talent on board, another continental manager besides Wenger had won it already.

 

Kudos - like somebody else on the Christian Fuchs thread said, we're getting swamped with awards this season. It truly is incredible. All this praise - can we take it?

[GloverFox]

... Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri has been named manager of the year by the League Managers' Association.

The 64-year-old Italian was honoured after leading the Foxes to their maiden top-flight title in his first season with the club...

As per the previous comments, what else can we say about this gent! ... Gracious, funny, sincere ... but more over .. an honourable man and a suitable class act for our equally honourable owners. Leicester City really have been the pinnacle of success this season and Claudio has managed the expectations, the doubts, the media and the 'panic' magnificently. I was so pleased for him when Bocelli sang, you could see him swell with Italian pride. Thank you Claudio the 'maestro of dreams' ... Yes, we will keep dreaming for you!

[Bob Weasel Fox]

... Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri has been named manager of the year by the League Managers' Association.

The 64-year-old Italian was honoured after leading the Foxes to their maiden top-flight title in his first season with the club...

As per the previous comments, what else can we say about this gent! ... Gracious, funny, sincere ... but more over .. an honourable man and a suitable class act for our equally honourable owners. Leicester City really have been the pinnacle of success this season and Claudio has managed the expectations, the doubts, the media and the 'panic' magnificently. I was so pleased for him when Bocelli sang, you could see him swell with Italian pride. Thank you Claudio the 'maestro of dreams' ... Yes, we will keep dreaming for you!

Just an unbelievable season and he is an unbelievable manager

Superb absolutely superb

[GloverFox]

Superb absolutely superb

Spot on ....

[gerrytaggart]

Must admit that first press shot of him sitting down in his garden when he first signed didnt fill me with confidence.

But then again Im wrong about alot of things.

[kushiro]

Claudio Ranieri: 'How I took Leicester City to the top of the Premier League'

Tom Rowley

 

28 May 2016 • 7:00am

 

Some time before the final whistle, the plaudits replaced the scepticism. No sooner had Leicester City pulled off the preposterous in winning the Premier League, than the architect of that triumph, Claudio Ranieri, was being hailed as the manager of the month and serenaded in front of a home crowd by his friend and fellow Italian, the tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Ranieri had become, in the words of his 96-year-old mother, the 'King of England’. Yet his office at the city’s King Power Stadium feels more like an upmarket waiting room than a victor’s palace. Ranieri does not sit behind a grand desk but slouches on a long sofa fixed to the wall, lit by soft blue lights.

 Ranieri as a Roma player in 1973 

Behind him, where I expected to find framed press cuttings chronicling his 30 years as a coach, there are instead portraits of the league’s other managers (so they can recognise themselves when they come to visit). The fridge in the corner is full of alcohol, but he hardly drinks the stuff.

'It’s difficult for me to show my happiness,’ he tells me when we meet, a week after his players took the title. 'But I am very happy. Believe me. I don’t show it but it’s inside me.’ Displays of emotion are not in Ranieri’s character. Take the day of the crucial game between Chelsea and Tottenham that ended up handing the league to Leicester. 

On that day of intense anticipation, when everyone else was preparing to celebrate the long-awaited victory if it came, Ranieri flew back to Rome to have lunch with his mother, Renata, even though he knew it meant he would miss the match that evening. She was having trouble with the batteries in her pacemaker, he explains now, and he thought he ought to check on her. 

He might not show it, but Ranieri knows he has achieved something remarkable: he calls the Leicester story a favola – a fairy tale

When the club’s owner, the Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, learnt of his plans, he lent Ranieri his private jet so he could make it back in time for kick-off. But rather than joining a party with the players, Ranieri had a leisurely dinner at home with his wife of 40 years, Rosanna, and two Italian club officials, and watched the game on television

 

Ranieri – who stood to gain a £5 million bonus and to double his salary if Chelsea won this game, or it was a draw – remained calm throughout, sitting back in his armchair. The only time he displayed emotion was when Eden Hazard scored the equaliser for Chelsea that gave Leicester the title. Then he allowed himself a glass of champagne. Just one. 

Soon after, his Italian staff left to join the party in the streets; Ranieri and his wife stayed at home. They switched over from the post-match commentary to a comedy chosen by his wife. 

And so, on the night his club triumphed for the first time in its 132-year history, on the night the 64-year-old won the major title that had eluded him all his life, Claudio Ranieri went to bed at the normal time and was asleep not long after 11pm.

From unlikely lads to winners

He might not show it, but Ranieri knows he has achieved something remarkable: he calls the Leicester story a favola – a fairy tale. Dubbed the 'unlikely lads’, his squad of cast-offs and free transfers – at 5,000 to 1, the rank outsiders – had somehow become the champions of English football.  When we meet, he still seems a little shocked.

Has he realised the scale of his accomplishment yet? 'I realise because a lot of people come. But, of course, all the emotion? No. Maybe we have to [wait] a little more into the holidays and  then maybe you can realise what happened  this season.’  What happened, he soon tells me, is that, even early on, he felt a kind of energy about the place. 

 

'I met the Leicester people and I felt good electricity, a good feeling between me and the owner, between me and the players and between me and the other staff. It was amazing. I said, “We can do something special,” but of course never, never, never I thought about the title.’

Controlling his temper

First, he dispensed with the myth that he is always calm, a foil to managers such as Sir Alex Ferguson, who used to deal out his notorious 'hairdryer treatment’.

In fact, Ranieri says, he was brutal when he needed to be. 'You see me very calm. When I get crazy, I am going very crazy. I get crazy when I see something’s wrong or when the attitude is no good. I can take the table and…’ Now the quiet man is miming throwing a table on its side. 

Thousands line streets for Leicester City's Premier League victory parade 

 

Are you sure, Mr Ranieri? 'Yes, don’t worry. You think, “Oh, nice man.” I change the face. Don’t worry. I want people to come to me with a laugh, but [if they cross the line] I change.’  Mostly, though, he did remain calm. When he realised the team had a real chance of clinching the title, he gave the players a pep talk.

'OK, we need to keep going with the same mentality,’ he told them. 'Remember, this is a crazy league: this year or never more.’ When he managed Chelsea in the early 2000s, he was labelled 'the Tinkerman’ for constantly changing the line-up; some players criticised this practice for undermining their confidence. 

Pizza, cocktails and retirement

At Leicester, he focused instead on nurturing esprit de corps, ringing an imaginary bell and yelling 'dilly ding, dilly dong’ whenever he needed his lads to give him more.

If they stuck to the drill, he told them, he would take them  all out… for pizza. (When they did indeed win the league, he took them to a pizzeria, one that serves margheritas for £6.25.) 

 

Now the league is won, Ranieri is suddenly in demand. His phone has rung constantly with congratulations (he won’t tell me who is calling), and the mayor of Leicester, grateful for a victory he says could bring in more than £100 million in tourism revenue, is considering erecting a statue of the modest Italian. Ranieri is facing the novel task of lowering expectations.

 

'Next step is: maintain this. We have to be calm and say, “OK, this year we put aside.” The foundation is good. Now we start to grow up. Now it’s important to arrive 10 on the table or higher and maybe go on a long journey in the Champions League if it’s possible.’ 

He clearly intends to savour the victory, and laughs when I ask whether he will soon retire. 'Why do I have to retire? I am a young man. If I retire, I die.’ 

'Clownio' Ranieri

This particular favola is not really an overnight miracle. Rather, it is a story about decades of sheer perseverance.  Ranieri always wanted to be a footballer ('In my mind, there was only football,’ he says of his Roman upbringing), but he never excelled technically.

Fans celebrate during the bus parade 

His local side, Roma, twice rejected him before taking him on at the comparatively late age of 18. He now concedes he was 'not so good’. 

After switching to management aged 35, he notched up a string of almost-victories, cruelly denied: second with Juventus, second with Roma, second with Chelsea. Each time, his approach was marked not by genius but graft. 

Why do I have to retire? I am a young man. If I retire, I die

In his time at Chelsea, he was ridiculed in the press as 'Clownio’. He became the 'dead man walking’ when the oligarch Roman Abramovich took over, granting the Italian what turned out to be a short-lived stay of execution. (Later, he named his memoir Proud Man Walking.)

Chelsea's Eden Hazard equalises during the match against Spurs on 2 May 

At Chelsea, he struggled to learn English, his third language. He took English classes three days a week for two years and was called a 'walking malapropism’ for his trouble.

Now, his English is better than he thinks, but grammar still eludes him. He speaks in short, clipped sentences and chuckles often, making plain, in the absence of the right word, his good intentions.

He claims the lack of a major trophy never bugged him – 'Every time I battle with the top’ – but his actions belie this. Entering his seventh decade, he had already managed 13 clubs but he entertained no thoughts of retiring: he still hungered after that elusive title, that crowning glory.

Claudio Ranieri's press conference hijacked by champagne-spraying Leicester City players 

 

Which probably explains why, in spite of pain in his knees and hips, he agreed to become national coach of Greece, which even he accepts was a 'mistake’. Only four months into the job, the side suffered a humiliating loss against the Faroe Islands. When the Telegraph’s photographer unwittingly reprises the topic later, Ranieri groans and says, 'Don’t remind me, please.’

After that debacle, he finally wound up at Leicester last summer, only to be met with more naysaying. Gary Lineker, the Match of the Day presenter who used to play for the side, tweeted, 'Claudio Ranieri? Really?’ 

 

All these years he has been sustained by his faith. The link between football and God was forged early, when, as the youngest son of a Roman butcher, he was allowed to play on the church pitch after services. 'Before, the Mass,’ he says. 'After, you go there [and have] the biscuit, play.’ Laughing now, he adds, 'Without the Mass, you don’t play.’

Patron saint of lost causes 

He remains a devout Catholic, telling me he goes to church as often as he can. 'I am very close to God. I speak with him.’  He prays every night – and during the day, too. 'If you can help me, thank you,’ he tells God. 'If I don’t deserve, OK, thank you the same.’

Other times, he says, 'I want to live but give me the strength to keep all this stress, [to meet] everything with a smile… Give me the right balance.’ Now that he has won the league, he tells me, he has thanked God 'a lot of times’. 

Celebrations overtake a press conference on 7 May   Credit: Getty 

In one of his early jobs as a coach, at Italy’s Cagliari in the late ’80s, he made his first visit to the Umbrian tomb of St Rita, the patron saint of lost causes. Soon afterwards, what Ranieri calls his 'first fairy tale’ was underway: the transformation of a side languishing in Italy’s third division to a club that could play the best in the country.  

'After there, when it was possible I go back [to the tomb] with the other teams. I go back with Fiorentina, I go back also with Chelsea. I believe that there are these kind of saints who help you.’  In bearing all those jibes these past 30 years, he has exhibited something close to grace. 

 

Despite the occasionally harsh judgment of his 'sharks’ (as he calls sportswriters), he still begins every press conference by shaking each journalist by the hand, and insists 'criticism can improve the man’. He retains the ability to laugh at himself.

When, in his last days at Chelsea, rival fans yelled, 'You’re getting sacked in the summer,’ he deadpanned, 'No, I’m getting sacked in May.’

He also believes in fate, stating, 'Everything is written.’ It was 'karma’, he says, that Leicester’s last game this season was against Chelsea, which granted him the opportunity to parade his bargain-basement title-winners on Abramovich’s home turf. 

 

But he rejects my invitation to exact revenge on the billionaire with an intemperate word or two. 'No. No. No. Why revenge? After one year [under Abramovich], I go home. It was normal, it was normal. I know football.’ His longevity near the top of European football – all these years in the victors’ waiting room – can also be explained by his desire to live a quiet life, never getting too carried away by the successes, never too downbeat in defeat.

Humility and home life 

In contrast to the prima donnas of the Premier League – the players with their sports cars and superinjunctions, the managers with their gargantuan egos – Ranieri comes across as ever so mild. He is an ambassador for the Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer, which seems about right: technical and precise.  

'I am a very, very shy man. With my friends, I love when we are [together] but always I stay a little behind, reserved. I love to watch. I enjoy living a normal life.’ 

He browses antiques fairs with his wife and shuns celebrity company to dine with his daughter, Claudia, a publicist, and his young grandson, Orlando.

Ranieri and Wes Morgan lift the Premier League Trophy   Credit: Getty 

When he is not watching football, he is getting out his Andrew Lloyd Webber DVDs. 'I don’t know how many times I’ve watched The Phantom of the Opera. I think seven, eight. We are crazy about musicals. Also The Lion King. Mamma Mia! Cats. Les Misérables. A lot.’ 

This summer, Ranieri will head back to Italy to spend a holiday in his beloved south. On the way there, though, he has already decided on a detour.

He wants to return one last time to the tomb of St Rita. There he might stand, in the basilica’s cool interior – escaping for just one moment the hard-won praise and the new-found pressure – eyes closed in reflection, head bowed in thanks.

 

•  

 

[Bob Weasel Fox]

Must admit that first press shot of him sitting down in his garden when he first signed didnt fill me with confidence.

But then again Im wrong about alot of things.

You and me both Gerry

I was as pleased for King Ranieri than I was for myself and other long suffering City fans

A genuine breath of fresh air

A genuine nice man

A genuine GOD in my eyes

[HighPeakFox]

This reminds me of reading All Played Out, by Pete Davies. The book was centred around England going to Italia 90, where the England team was based in Cagliari - they'd just been promoted to Serie A for the first time (I think, I need to go back and check), and that must have been the work of Claudio.........what a guy.

[Manini]

Our Bill Shankley, our Bob Paisley, our Don Revie, our Brian Clough, our Alex Ferguson.

He'll never be forgotten in this city now. Absolutely magnificent man.

[Bob Weasel Fox]

Our Bill Shankley, our Bob Paisley, our Don Revie, our Brian Clough, our Alex Ferguson.

He'll never be forgotten in this city now. Absolutely magnificent man.

Tactically he was spot on and I mean literally spot on all season

Your right to compare him with those greats of the game

[Manini]

Tactically he was spot on and I mean literally spot on all season

Your right to compare him with those greats of the game

He might not be on the same level as them achievements wise, but for what he's done for this club, and the town and the people. Unimaginable.