Hard to repeat
Rich will rule for 20 years, claims Ranieri
It will take 20 years for next Leicester, says Ranieri.
LONDON: Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri believes that it will take up to 20 years for an unfancied team to emulate his side’s achievement by winning the Premier League.
Leicester defied odds of 5,000-1 to prevail ahead of the division’s glamour clubs, captivating fans around the world and turning their previously unheralded players into household names.
Ranieri’s side are only the sixth team to have won the Premier League, as the English top tier was rebranded in 1992, and the Italian does not foresee another unlikely champion emerging anytime soon.
“Big money makes the big teams and usually the big teams win, but now we can only say 99 percent,” he said, in comments published by several British newspapers yesterday.
“How many years after Nottingham Forest [in 1978] and Blackburn [in 1995] have another team won? Next season will be the same, for the next 10 or 20 years will be the same.
“The richest will win or who can pick up the best players to make a team. If 20 owners have the same money for the players, only one can win and three will go down. That is football.”
Leicester have become particularly popular in Italy, Ranieri’s homeland, and Thailand, which is where owners King Power are based, but Ranieri said he had received messages of support from around the world.
“Now the second team in Italy is Leicester,” he said. “In Thailand, the first team is Leicester. I’ve received letters from Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil — everywhere [saying] ‘Leicester, Leicester, what a legend’.”
The football world is slowly coming to terms with Leicester’s extraordinary feat and Ranieri admitted that he, too, is still trying to fathom it.
“All the people around the world are asking for Leicester, what happened?” he said.
“But this is a moment you have to leave a little more [time] for and taste slowly like a good wine. Savour it. Maybe now is too early to think what we have done.
“Maybe one or two years could be better to understand, but now it is important to stay high in the world.”
Leicester’s triumph was confirmed by second-place Tottenham Hotspur’s 2-2 draw at Chelsea on Monday and they will get their hands on the trophy after Saturday’s final home game against Everton.
In time, thoughts will turn to Leicester’s title defence, as well as the club’s first ever crack at the Champions League, but Ranieri said that he would not urge the club to make superstar signings.
“We don’t need the superstars,” said the 64-year-old, who joined his squad for a celebratory lunch at an Italian restaurant in Leicester on Tuesday.
“We need our players. You see [in January] we bought Demarai Gray, we bought Daniel Amartey. It’s the same. They have barely been with us, not six months.
“I want to improve the squad without big stars, but the right players. It is too early to say we need five, six, seven or eight players. We have to see.”
Ranieri signed a three-year contract last year after succeeding Nigel Pearson as manager and said that he was in no hurry to sign a new deal.
“I have three years,” he said. “Why do I have to sign a new contract?”
While Leicester’s players assembled at the home of star striker Jamie Vardy to watch the Chelsea-Spurs game on television, Ranieri watched at home with his wife.
Asked how he had reacted to the 83rdminute goal by Chelsea forward Eden Hazard that gave Leicester the title, he replied: “I was first on the armchair, but after on the ceiling!”
Meanwhile, Ranieri’s mother Renata said her son’s triumph with Leicester in England has more than made amends for being sacked by Roma.
“I’m sorry about how it finished for him at Roma — we’ve always been a big Roma-supporting family,” Renata, 96, told La Repubblica newspaper yesterday.
“He took over [at Roma] when the season had already started. He didn’t earn the respect of his own city... and I’m disappointed it finished like that for him.
“But now, he’s the king of England and he’s getting compliments from all around the world.”
Ranieri went to Rome to have lunch with his elderly mother on the day Leicester clinched their historic Premier League title on Monday.
It was only two hours, but it gave her 64-year-old son “time to relax” and reflect on an unforgettable season at the tail end of what has been a storied, and not always successful, career for the coach known as the “Tinkerman”.
Ranieri’s achievements with Leicester have resonated around the world, especially in his native Italy.
Sacked by Juventus before the end of the season in 2009, Ranieri was appointed Roma coach months later after Luciano Spalletti quit after two opening defeats.
It looked a dream appointment for the man who grew up supporting Roma while working as a butcher’s boy before embarking on a modest playing career.
But despite Roma going 24 games unbeaten, Ranieri’s popularity plummeted when they lost the title and the Italian Cup final to Jose Mourinho’s treble-winning Inter Milan.
After a 1-0 Cup final defeat to Inter, Mourinho mocked Ranieri for showing his players the Gladiator film in a bid to inspire them to victory.
Defeat to Inter in the Italian Super Cup final the following season preceded a negative series of results and Ranieri quit Roma in February 2011.
Five years after the bittersweet experience, Ranieri’s coaching acumen is now being applauded around the world.
“I started crying at the end of game,” his mother said of Chelsea’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham.