Sacked...but not forgotten
Ranieri back at Leicester for first time since he was axed nine months after title miracle
CLAUDIO RANIERI will steel himself and try to fight back the tears. ‘i’m a very shy man,’ he said with a shrug. ‘i don’t want to show my emotions. if i am ready, i can be very calm. if i am surprised sometimes little tears happen.’
This occasion, however, might be a test for the Roman as he returns to leicester City tomorrow for the first time in competition. an opponent and a friend, in a stadium where his smiling features are prominent on photographs and pre-match highlights reels.
Sacked but not forgotten, just as he harbours no animosity and has wished the club well since his exit a mere nine months after winning the Premier league title, the 5,000-1 miracle, and that spine-tingling presentation when he stood beside his friend andrea Bocelli as the tenor sang Nessun Dorma in a leicester shirt.
‘always, i cheered with them,’ said the Watford boss. ‘always i feel a little part of them. i am very proud to be part of the leicester fairytale and the history of the football club. it was an amazing season and the fans were with me from the beginning.
‘Winning the Premier league will be in my heart for the rest of my life but i am here in Watford to write new things. ’
like most competitors, Ranieri is not keen to wallow in the past. looking back on the good times is akin to resting on laurels. it will be frowned upon in the sporting fraternity and best left until retirement but if there can be exceptions then this must be one.
Ranieri was prepared to accept that. ‘The pictures i see when i look back are the fantastic chairman and the happy ending with Bocelli, and the crowd around us crazy with happiness. We were so happy. We worked so hard to achieve the Premier league and we were together. More than one man, we were a group of people, all trying to do their very best.’
Ranieri’s only return to the King Power thus far was a sombre event, to participate in tributes following the death of chairman and owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, who died along with four others in a helicopter crash after a match in october 2018.
‘Vichai was a fantastic man, a fantastic chairman, and always happy, always smiling,’ said Ranieri. ‘When i think of him, i think about my birthdays and before the match he would arrive with a big cake and everybody sang Happy Birthday.i thought, “oh my God, this would never happen in italy”.’
little more than a month after the tragedy, Watford were visitors at the King Power and fans in the away end unfurled a banner which read: ‘Thank you Vichai for allowing us all to dream’.
‘The leicester story opened the minds of all the little teams,’ said Ranieri. ‘also, it was a good story for mankind: never, never give up. For every man and woman in life there are problems, there are obstacles but if you believe and if you are strong in the bad moments you can get over them.
‘That is what the leicester story means in my opinion. i can feel it also here at Watford at a human level.
‘Football can do very good things. Football can link together all the world. in leicester, there is a big community of indian people and i remember when one indian person came to me and said, “Thank you, Claudio, because now we are more involved with the city by the football”. That has stayed in my mind.’
Ranieri thinks the distraction of leicester’s first Champions league campaign, when they reached the last eight before losing to atletico Madrid, may have been partly to blame for the team’s accelerated demise and his dismissal in February 2017.
‘it’s normal when a team reaches the Champions league for the first time that all their mental energies go towards europe,’ he said.
Perhaps they are experiencing something similar under Brendan Rodgers. after winning the Fa Cup to qualify for the europa league, leicester are misfiring again.
Having taken only one point from their last three Premier league games, they will slip below Watford if beaten by Ranieri’s improving side, who are buoyant after a 4-1 victory against Manchester united.
‘Guilty no, a little sad yes,’ said the 70-year-old italian when asked how it felt to have hastened the departure of ole Gunnar Solskjaer. ‘it is the life.’ nobody knows it better.