He scored, I hit the ceiling...
The moment Claudio knew title was his
WHILE his players gathered at Jamie Vardy’s house to bite their fingers and hold on to each other for comfort as Tottenham attempted to keep the title race alive, Claudio Ranieri sat serenely in his favourite chair at home. And then Eden Hazard scored. “I was in the armchair at the time,” said the Leicester City manager. “Well, until Eden Hazard’s goal went in and the final whistle was blown and then I was on the ceiling!
“It was only then that I thought, ‘I’ve done it!’ It feels good.”
The magnitude of his achievement has yet to sink in. This is his 15th club, but his collection of honours from the 14 that came before – highlights include the Italian third division and the French second – hardly suggested Ranieri would be the man behind the greatest fairy tale of them all.
“When you start off as a manager you hope you win a league somewhere. Well, I’ve only gone and won the English league – the best league in the whole world,” he said yesterday, having extricated himself from the flash mob that greeted his players when he took them out for an Italian lunch in the city centre.
“The fans are going crazy. All I have seen is craziness. I am so glad to bring that kind of happiness to everybody.
“It is a great achievement. Everything is beyond words. I realise now what I have done because everyone in the world seems to be asking about Leicester.
“It’s driven people crazy. People everywhere. In Italy everybody’s second favourite team is Leicester. In Thailand everybody’s first team is Leicester.
“I have had letters from everywhere – Paraguay, Uruguay, you name it. I am just so glad we can bring this kind of happiness to so many people in so many places.
“But maybe now it is too early. This should maybe be like a good wine. It is something that needs drinking slowly and savouring. Maybe it will only really be something you can truly evaluate in a year or two’s time.” What is already beyond doubt is that Ranieri is the affable alchemist who has created gold from a motley collection of unknowns, has-beens and never-weres, making each one better, and the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
On the surface he has remained calm, charming, never indulging in the mind games of others as his players refused to buckle under the enormous weight of history.
But yesterday he revealed another side to his character, the one that has driven him during every moment of this remarkable campaign.
“I am a strange man. Inside me there are two completely different people,” he said. “The first one is aggressive. I want to win so badly. I want to win, win, win. The first person is the Claudio that is never satisfied. Never satisfied with anything other than winning. But the second person is calm and trying to keep everyone calm around me.”
It is that combination which has created something so special; that father figure, with his heady blend of loyalty and discipline, encouragement and ambition, who has placed himself at the centre of a Foxes story which he believes has by no means reached its final chapter.
“Leicester will go far,” he said. “These players are like my sons. They have to be careful in their choices.
“I want to improve the side but we don’t need to bring in superstars. We
need players who are like us. Other people, all over the world, can see something special has gone on here.”
The coronation will come at the King Power this Saturday when the Foxes entertain Everton, to be followed by an equally poignant outing in the final game at Chelsea.
The guard of honour his players will receive from the deposed champions at Stamford Bridge will be a sweet moment for the Italian, who was removed by club owner Roman Abramovich in 2004 to make way for Jose Mourinho.
“It will be good because when I left Chelsea, the players made a guard of honour for me. Now I will be going back in the same way,” he said. “It’s a marvellous story isn’t it? Just fantastic. I will be very satisfied, but it is not revenge. I am not a man who wants revenge or thinks about it.
“The owner wanted a change. I tried to do my best for him and the club but he’s always been good to me whenever I have wanted to go to a match there.”
This, however, was not the way even he imagined he would be returning to the stadium where he first introduced himself to English football.
“We all know big money makes big teams, and the big teams and the big money wins 99 per cent of the time,” he said with a grin. “I know because I am the one per cent.”