CLAUDIO CALLED VARDY ‘RADIO W **** R’ AS HE NEVER SHUT UP!
How Ranieri made Foxes star his title talisman
CLAUDIO RANIERI transformed Jamie Vardy into a title-winner – but only after branding him “a radio w **** r”.
Early in his Leicester reign, the veteran Italian boss turned on the Foxes’ talismanic forward after becoming fed up with Vardy’s incessant chatter.
And he coined the unflattering new nickname for the striker as the pair forged a relationship that took them both to an unforgettable fairytale ending, as Leicester won the 2015-16 Premier League title.
Ranieri left the club in February 2017, but is still going strong at 70, and today returns to the scene of his greatest triumph for the first time as Watford manager.
But as Vardy revealed in his 2016 book ‘From Nowhere,’ the old Fox wasn’t all twinkly charm.
The ex-England international eventually gave as good as he got – but Ranieri drew first blood.
Vardy said: “One day, I was rabbiting on in the dressing room and
Claudio told me to turn the radio off.
“I just looked at him, confused. He said, ‘You, you’re always talking.
You’re like a f***ing radio. You... you radio w **** r!’.
“That was my new nickname coined.
“Later in that season, he was chuffed to bits when I broke Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record for scoring in successive matches – he presented me with a signed Leicester shirt at the training ground.
“I turned it around to look at the back. It said, ‘9 W **** r.’”
A big part of Ranieri’s recipe for success at the King Power Stadium was not to interfere much.
Although he’d picked up the name ‘Tinkerman’ at Chelsea more than a decade previously, earning a reputation for experimenting with his team and formation, it was the opposite in the east Midlands.
The seeds of that first-season title triumph were sowed on a pre-season trip to Austria when, during the first meeting, Ranieri said how much he admired the group’s fighting spirit.
He subsequently did tinker, but around the edges. And as the idea dawned that something special was happening for 5,000/1 shots Leicester, his management of the media and the rising expectation around the club was first-class.
Before every pre-match chat, he entered the media room with a smile and said, “Hello, my sharks,” to the waiting press pack, working the room and shaking everyone by the hand before sitting to take questions.
As a way of relieving the pressure he refused point-blank to ever talk about winning the title. He only referenced a Champions League place after it had been secured. But what really lifted Leicester over the line was his unexpected gentle hand.
Right-back Danny Simpson recalled: “We’d lost away at Arsenal. I’d been sent off. They scored in the last minute and we lost 2-1. They were celebrating like they’d won the FA Cup.
“Claudio came into the dressingroom and said, ‘Lads, don’t worry about it. We will have a week off. Clear your minds. We go again.’.
“I thought to myself, ‘Who gets one week off in the middle of the season to clear their mind?’ For me, having been sent off, I was amazed.
“Did it work? I don’t think we lost a game after that. That team talk and giving us that week off to forget about people saying we had ‘blown the title’ is something I’ll always remember.
“It would have been so easy for Claudio to give us a double session or run us. But he didn’t.
“There was a touch of experience and genius in that.”