‘The boss’ flies in to reveal his ruthless streak once more
V ichai Srivaddhanaprabha flew to Leicester yesterday for a gathering of the King Power hierarchy with no one who works for the Thai billionaire in any doubt that the man who has sunk £120 million into the Premier League champions over the past six years is at a low ebb.
Their remarkable title win last season gave the Srivaddhanaprabha family a profile that they never sought, while their King Power polo teams have given them a way into the British establishment enjoyed by no other Premier League club owners. The outrage over Claudio Ranieri’s sacking is new and uncomfortable territory for a family who have lived something of a charmed life as multi-sport owners.
As the social-media abuse reached epic proportions on Friday, Vichai abandoned his Instagram account and his older son Top weighed in to try to calm those who were gunning for his father with the assurance that the family would always try to do the right thing for the club. Ranieri’s statement on Friday, emotional and without recrimination, ensured that the public mood remained very much behind him. The backlash has been difficult to rationalise for the Srivaddhanaprabhas, a devout Buddhist family. Since they bought the club six years ago, their total investment in Leicester, including the directors’ loans they have written off, stands at around £120 million, and they have reinvested any money generated by the club. While they recognised that the Ranieri decision was always going to divide opinion there has been shock at the level of abuse they have taken. The decision was made following conversations in Spain with key Leicester players last week about the team’s dreadful form. The consensus was clear: the players wanted to go back to the 4-4-1-1 system that yielded such results last season, with a highpressing game and counter-attacking football. Ranieri, who had lost faith in Wes Morgan and Robert Huth’s ability to play a high line, refused to do so.
As results got worse the perception at the club was that the manager’s confidence was running out fast and that he was prone to erratic decisionmaking. He opted to switch to a threeman defence less than two hours before kick-off away to Copenhagen in the Champions League in November, a decision he later reversed. In the home defeat against Chelsea in January he tried the same strategy only to abandon it again –although not before some players clearly gestured towards the bench that they were confused.
Of all the senior players, it was perceived by the Srivaddhanaprabhas that only Morgan had really recognised the extent to which the family felt let down and embarrassed by performances this season. A dim view has been taken of others who have might have been relatively outspoken in interviews but internally have done little useful.
For a flavour of just how much the billionaire Vichai is prepared to make difficult decisions one needs only to look at his reorganisation of his beloved King Power polo team last summer after they failed to defend their Queen’s Cup title.
In May the King Power polo team hosted a royal charity polo event for Prince Harry which raised in excess of £100,000 and in return they received the de facto royal endorsement – with the prince posing with Vichai, his polo-playing sons Top and Tal, Ranieri and the Premier League trophy. The same month they lost in the semi-final of the Queen’s Cup against the La Indiana team, bankrolled by the American businessman Michael Bickford. As a consequence, Vichai dropped his own son, Top, from the team, as well as the other lowerranked player, Pepe Araya.
By reshuffling his players in order to stay within the limits of the polo handicapping system, Vichai was able to bring back the higher-ranked Englishman Hugo Lewis, who had been part of the previous season’s success. He added the less experienced of his sons, Tal, in place of Top. They retained the British Gold Cup title in July.
Polo has always been the family’s true passion with brothers Top and Tal competing in the King Power teams alongside the Pieres brothers, Facundo and Gonzalo junior, the well-paid stars recruited from Argentina. They have invested heavily in their Berkshire base and also the stable of ponies and staff, many of whom have come as part of the package with Facundo, who is regarded as the world’s leading player.
Vichai’s instinctive decision-making was demonstrated, to a lesser extent, by the decision to sack Terry Robinson, the club’s former director of football, in December 2014, during Leicester’s first Premier League season. Robinson and former manager Nigel Pearson had never seen eye-toeye but, even so, at the time it was regarded as a signal from the man known to everyone at the King Power as ‘the boss’ that he expected to see changes.
There could yet be more departures, with doubt over the future of Eduardo Macía, the head of senior player recruitment at Leicester, a Ranieri recommendation from the time they spent together at Valencia. These will also be exacting times for the director of football Jon Rudkin, a lifelong Leicester man who delivered the bad news to Ranieri on behalf of Vichai.
There was no room to manoeuvre on the pay-off, with a figure written into Ranieri’s contract thought to be worth around £3 million. Rudkin was retained in part by the Thai owners because he represented continuity, a former youth-team player who had never made the grade as a professional and then worked his way up the coaching ranks at the academy.
Ranieri did subsequently speak to Vichai but not until after Rudkin had begun the process of the Italian’s departure.
The gathering of the key figures at King Power, including the Dublinborn chief executive Susan Whelan, will be used to decide on a strategy for the few days ahead and for ‘the boss’ to make it quite clear that he needs the difficult decision that has caused him a very stressful few days ultimately to yield results on the pitch.
A dim view has been taken of players who have done little useful