The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
In dying minutes, Ranieri sacked
Club sacks Italian manager just nine months after he led them to their first-ever Premier League title
CLAUDIO RANIERI always said it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t have been real. Leicester City does not win Premier League championships. Players dismissed as a write-offs or seen as castoffs do not win Premier League championships, nor do managers in the autumn of their careers, after a lifetime of second best.
It always felt like fantasy, and Ranieri always knew it. He said it through last spring, evenastheworldfellforleicester’simpossible story, and he said it all through this bleak winter,too,eventhoughheknewithadhappened — he had the winner’s medal and the memories to remind him.
It could not have been real, because it did notfeelrealintheimpatient,unforgivingworld of the Premier League. A manager fired less than a year — 298 days, in fact — after winning the first championship in his team’s history, and arguably the most remarkable since the league’s inception, feels real. A manager fired less than a month after being told he had the “unwavering support” of his employers feels real; a manager fired because the players he had turned into immortals had decided his powers were no longer enough feels real. Anything, everything, else must be fantasy. Reality, after all, is simply too brutal.on Wednesdaynight,ranieri’sleicesterteamlost, 2-1, to Sevilla in the first leg of a Champions Leagueround-of-16matchup.itisworthpausing to consider that context in full: That is Leicester City, erstwhile of English soccer’s third tier, in the Champions League.
It was another defeat, yes, but it felt different from the others. Jamie Vardy had scored a crucial away goal that gave Leicester hope; Danny Simpson, the defender, suggested that the defiant mood in the locker room had carried with it an echo of the camaraderie of last year.
On Thursday, after returning to England with his players early in the morning, Ranieri was informed that he was being dismissed. Leicesterreleasedastatementafewhourslater, praising Ranieri’s “warmth, charm and charisma,” assuring him the team will always be “grateful” for everything he achieved, but making it clear that change was necessary if the team was to avoid relegation. It was delicately phrased and thoughtfully composed: an ornate blade, but a blade nonetheless.
On a sporting level, in truth, the team’s decision is hardly unfathomable. Leicester’s play hasbeendismal.ranierihasrecordedjusttwo wins in the Premier League since November. His team sits just a point above the relegation zone,inimmediateandveryrealdangerofbecomingthefirstsidetoberelegatedasachampion since 1938. On another level, though, it is — as Gary Lineker, a Leicester fan and former player, put it — “gut-wrenchingly sad.” For Ranieri, it is sad because he has been betrayed by his own optimism. In hindsight, it is obvious that there was never going to be a happy ending. Leicester had flown too high, had too far to fall. Whatever Ranieri did this season would have felt like an anticlimax.
Forleicester,itissadbecauseitlendsasour codatothesweetestofstories.theclub’sowners, the Thai Srivaddhanaprabha family, will becriticizedforfailingtostandbytheirman,after all he had done for them, but the players do not deserve to escape censure.
As Ranieri said in December, players who react to triumph by seeking more are so rare as to be all but unique. Few on his squad had ever won anything before last year; it is only human to find that intensity draining away.
Their lack of faith in Ranieri, though, is less forgivable. Earlier this month, Ranieri seemed to admit that he had, perhaps, stood by his players for too long, indulging the stalwarts of the championship victory too many opportunities to recapture their form.
If only that loyalty had been reciprocated. As results started to turn, Leicester’s players started to doubt. Where last season they had admired his tactical subtlety and enjoyed his pep talks, now they were left befuddled and bemused. He indulged them their poor form; they were not willing to afford him the same courtesy. That, perhaps, explains why heroes tend to make themselves scarce as soon as the job at hand is done.
Beyond that, though, is another sadness, one that spreads beyond Leicester the team andleicesterthecityandintothewiderworld.
What made Leicester so captivating last season — what inspired all of those books, whatencouragedproducerstostartoptioning movie rights — was the sense that what the club had achieved was so exceptional.
Itfeltlikeanantidotetotheironloreofelite soccer,andnotjustinengland:thatitistheexpensivestarsalonewhocanbringsuccess,that it is always the big clubs who win in the end, that romance has been hunted to extinction by commerce.
Leicester’s magic lay in inverting all of that, in proving that — every so often — a group of unheralded players led by a disregarded manageratanunnoticedclubcouldsomehowsucceed. It has become a cliché to call Leicester a fairy tale, but that is its precise narrative arc.
With Ranieri’s departure, though, the reverie evaporates, and reality sets in. It was not a fantasy, of course, even if it feels like one, now more than ever. It did actually happen. Butthatonlyaddstothesadness,knowingthat fantasiesdonotlast,thatsometimes,fantasies endlikethis,thecold,bleaksunlightpouringin.
NYT
‘NOT NORMAL TO WIN LEAGUE’
I say to my fans: ‘We want to be safe, to build a team, anything more and that’s fantastic.’ It’s not normal that we can win the league. It’s more difficult than last season. It’s easier that ET comes to Piccadilly Circus
On team’s odds to win the League again
‘MUSIC WOKE HIM UP’ ‘OOH F***ING HELL’ REALISTIC TARGETS
Maybe the music woke up (Riyad Mahrez)! Maybe he’s tired of dilly-ding, dilly dong and the Champions League music woke him. I liked his (performance), he worked very hard
On Mahrez’s Champions League goal They showed what we did on a big screen. The highlights of the season. And I cried. I cried. And I said: ‘Ooh f***ing hell. What we did… what we did!’”
On re-watching Foxes’ title celebrations Our goal is to reach 40 points. I said this from the beginning of the season. I maintain the focus on 40 points and we must do that as soon as possible. Of course it (relegation) is realistic and that is why I want the 40 points.
On relegation being a possibility
‘MESSI WANTS TO COME’
Messi wants to come but I don’t think he has my number! My phone doesn’t ring, so I don’t think he will be coming.
When asked on deadline day signings Yesterday my dream died. After the euphoria of last season and being crowned Premier League champions all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester; the club I love for always. Sadly this was not to be.
A day after getting sacked