Leicester life goes on and Ranieri is just a fond memory

THEY were turning away fans with banners at the entrance. ‘Fire safety’ was given as the official reason, as if anybody would really try and burn down the King Power with a piece of decorated A3 paper.

One guy with a sign reading ‘DILLY DING, DILLY DONG, BRING HIM BACK’ was ordered to hand it over to a club official and collect it afterwards.

One or two DIY protests had still managed to penetrate the ring of steel. ‘Thank you Claudio Ranieri’, read one. ‘GRAZIE MILLE CLAUDIO, CON AMORE’, read another.

Outside, one of the more publicity-thirsty betting companies had arranged for a hearse to sit outside the King Power Stadium with the words ‘RIP FOOTBALL’ arranged in flowers; which, if true, is no way to break bad news.

In defiance of its bleak prognosis, the football went ahead. And in the space of 59 minutes – the time it took Jamie Vardy and Danny Drinkwater to put Leicester 3-0 ahead – the gloom of the weekend had dissolved into glee.

Rarely has a regime been consigned so violently and dramatically to the past. Ranieri was not forgotten, but a memory, and a memory that seemed increasingly distant with each passing minute.

At this rarefied level, football is not so much a golden ladder as a series of revolving doors, and there is a passage in Vardy’s autobiography that neatly illustrates this.

It was summer 2015, and Leicester had just returned from a pre-season tour of Austria to the news that midfielder Esteban Cambiasso, the supporters’ player of the year and one of the architects of their great escape the previous season, was leaving the club.

“None of us were bothered,” Vardy admitted. “If Esteban was that influential at Leicester, he’d have won the players’ player of the year award. Football moves on. Two weeks later we signed a guy called N’Golo Kante. Job done.”

Football moves on. Ranieri is no Cambiasso, of course, but this is a game that moves at a brutal pace, and only ever faces in one direction.

“We will forever be grateful to Claudio for what he helped us to achieve,” wrote vice chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha in the match programme.

Anything strike you as slightly strange about that choice of words? Not “what he achieved”, but “what he helped us to achieve”. There is a minute but devastating distinction there, leaving the reader in no doubt that “Claudio” and “us” are now, and forever will be, two entirely separate entities. “We” won the title; Claudio helped.

Football moves on. It is the gift and the curse of this game. This Saturday, when Hull City visit, there will be a another match programme with another set of programme notes, and you can bet all the euros in Rome that Ranieri will not be mentioned in those. There is always another game. Another season. Another manager, and another after him.

But there will never be another Leicester. And if the last six months have achieved anything, it is to remind us all of the maddening enigma of modern football. Nobody really knows why Leicester won the title; least of all Leicester themselves.

And because they could not explain last season, they are powerless to explain this. But the creaky old piano, it seemed, still had one last tune in it.

And what a tune. Vardy’s blitzes around the final third carried just a little more vigour. Robert Huth leapt just a little higher. Kasper Schmeichel’s goal-kicks had just a little more juice behind them. LANGUID There was even what you might describe as a recognisable defensive shape, pressure on the ball, a genuine game-plan to supplant the languid entropy of the last few months.

You have to assume that back in Rome, Ranieri was watching. What do we think he was feeling about all this? Disappointment? Betrayal? Anger? I’m not so sure. Some time ago, in an article for Corriere dello Sport, Ranieri laid out his vision of the game. “Seeing a compact, tight side win the ball and attack in transition,” he wrote, “is exciting and beautiful to me.”

And here they were, compact and thrilling. Just as he liked it. Just as he remembered. Just like in the good times.

On the hour, with victory secure, the ‘Ranieri’ songs finally started up. The fans rose to their feet. Homemade banners emerged from crumpled pockets. And as Leicester surged defiantly into their new era, their old manager consigned to the past, it was possible to interpret all this as the most fitting of tributes. (© Daily Telegraph,

London)