Foxes threw Ranieri to wolves
By Gabriele Marcotti
MAYBE there was no other way to do it. Maybe the story of Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2015-16 was always going to be so unlikely, treated as somewhere between fairy tale and twilight zone, that the manager’s departure would be spoken of in similar terms.
Claudio Ranieri wrote in his statement that his “dream died”. Strictly speaking the “dream” was to stay at Leicester. The broader message was the death of romanticism, gratitude and the idea Leicester were somehow different.
It was quickly seized upon on social media by the likes of Gary Lineker and Michael Owen, who went so far as to say he had “fallen a little more out of love with football” at the news. Cut through the symbolism and hot air and there are interesting observations to be had.
The first, purely cynically, is that most of those involved in the 201516 Leicester adventure came out well ahead. Ranieri made history – and a lot of money. Jamie Vardy made history – and a lot of money. N’Golo Kante made history – and a lot of money and a move to another club where he will make even more money and likely make even more history.
Craig Shakespeare, the assistant who few had heard of until two years ago, parlayed it – at least temporarily – into a job as one of Sam Allardyce’s assistants with England. Tomorrow night against Liverpool, he will be in the dugout (and could remain there for the rest of the season). Steve Walsh, the recruitment specialist, got a move to Everton where he became director of football and gets to play with a much bigger budget. The owners, the Srivaddhanaprabhas, gained worldwide recognition, a more valuable football club and tons of domestic stardom.
That is the baseline to consider before we moan and complain too much about Leicester’s plight. Ranieri’s dream may have died, but surely compared to the other “dream” – guiding a club few outside these shores had heard of to the greatest upset in the history of organised sport – it pales by comparison.
Another is the narrative whereby we are all naive and it is a “results business” and Leicester could not afford the “spectre” of resignation so we should just grow up.
It’s temptingly contrarian, but it’s also nonsense. The fact is that wellrun clubs who aren’t hugely leveraged with debt or owned by guys who are somewhere between the incompetent and the insane tend to bounce back up to the Premier League in double-quick time thanks to size and parachute payments. In recent years it has happened to Hull, Burnley, QPR, West Ham and Newcastle (it’s likely to happen there again this season).
Leicester’s statement talked about safeguarding the long-term future of the club. But the fact is that the Leicester brand wasn’t built on winning titles and there was no evidence relegation would result in a slide down to League 2 oblivion. The brand was built on goodwill and underdog tales that translate around the world even beyond sport. And that has now been damaged. They become just another club fighting against relegation and acting like it, rather than a special cosy fairytale place. Which is why, far from being a clever “business decision” it is actually a very foolish one.
The club who pushed the #fearless and #believe hashtags actually showed plenty of fear and very little belief in the last few days. The latter was especially evident vis-a-vis the Champions League.
They were outplayed by Seville, sure, but everyone knows a 2-1 defeat in Europe is a wafer-thin lead. A 1-0 victory at the King Power – maybe not likely but certainly not impossible – would have seen them through to the quarter-finals. Winning the Champions League, however farfetched a proposition, is certainly more probable than what occurred last year. But they did not believe it could happen — and were fearful of the outcome.
Ultimately, you are left with the bare facts. Leicester were not in the relegation zone. And you would have thought 2015-16 would have earned Ranieri the chance to make sure it stayed that way.
IT is one of those stats that just seems wrong. No manager in the history of Manchester United has won a trophy during his first season in charge. But it’s true. And it could well change in the next few hours when United take on Southampton in the League Cup final at Wembley.
It’s one of those little wrinkles that Mourinho and his acolytes are bound to highlight if they succeed this afternoon. The broader point is that it doesn’t actually matter that much. You only care about the League Cup when you have got little else to cheer. More than the trophy itself, it’s the process that matters.
You can point to United being sixth in the league going into the final, worse off than last year under Louis van Gaal and then juxtapose it with Mourinho’s spending and cackle away. But the fact United have managed to go deep in three different cup competitions (they are in the quarter-final of the FA Cup and they are the bookmakers’ favourites in the Europa League) shows Mourinho is in his element in terms of squad rotation and preparing his side for knock-out competitions.
And even the league bears further examination. Yes, missing out on the Champions League (again) would be a setback. But they were actually just four points away from second place going into the weekend. So we are talking fine margins here.
A better bellwether for the club’s progress is the way they play. And this has, to some degree, gone under the radar. This is perhaps the most attacking football Mourinho has ever offered in his career. And it’s not coincidental either. To a squad that was already top-heavy, he added three attacking players and just one defender in the summer. And while he could have moved for a midfield stopper in January, they did not.
Is it a shift in Mourinho’s phil-osophy? Is it simply a case that he doesn’t believe the tried-andtested safety-first formula of yesteryear works anymore or, at least, works at Old Trafford? Time will tell. But this afternoon will speak volumes about the club’s progress. And whether Mourinho himself has re-evaluated his view of the game.