I was rabbiting on and Claudio said: ‘You’re always talking. You’re like a bloody radio!’
CLAUDIO RANIERI turned Jamie Vardy into a title-winner after calling him ‘a radio w **** r’.
The veteran Italian boss tuned in on Leicester City’s talismanic forward after becoming fed up with his incessant chatter.
And he coined the new nickname for the striker as the pair forged a relationship that was to take them both – and the Foxes – to unforgettable glory with a fairytale ending as they won the Premier League.
Ranieri, still going strong at 70, returns to the scene of his greatest triumph for the first time this afternoon with Watford.
But he had only been at the King Power Stadium for a matter of weeks when the Leicester’s star man pressed his buttons.
As Vardy revealed in his book: ‘From Nowhere,’ the pair had a strange relationship which eventually ended with Leicester not only winning the title but also with Vardy breaking Manchester United legend Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record for scoring in successive matches.
The ex-england international eventually gave as good as he got but Ranieri drew first blood as the 34-year-old striker revealed.
He 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 bloody radio. You, you radio w **** r’.
“My new nickname was coined. Later that season, he was chuffed to bits when I broke Van Nistelrooy’s record – he presented me with a signed Leicester shirt at the training ground a few days later. I turned it around to look at the back. It said: ‘9 W **** r’.”
Part of Ranieri’s light touch at the King Power Stadium was not to interfere.
Although he picked up the name ‘Tinkerman’ at Chelsea after earning a reputation for experimenting with his team formation at
Stamford Bridge, it was the opposite in the east Midlands. The seeds of that successful campaign were sewn during a pre-season trip to Austria when, during the first meeting, Ranieri said how much he admired the group’s fighting spirit.
The Italian subsequently did tinker – but only around the edges and, as the realisation that something special was in the making, his management of the media and expectation around the club was first class.
Questions
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 Premier League, and only referenced Champions League qualification when it was secured.
But what got Leicester over the line was a
gentle hand when it was least expected. As right-back Danny Simpson explained: “We’d been beaten away at Arsenal. I’d been sent off.
“They scored in the last minute and we lost 2-1. And they were celebrating as if they had won the FA Cup.
“Claudio came into the dressing room 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?
“Well, I don’t think we lost another game that season after that.
“That team talk and giving us that week off to forget about people saying we had blown the title, for me, is something I will always remember.
“It would have been so easy for him to give us a double session or run us. But he didn’t. There was a touch of experience and genius in that.”