With Italian tactician Claudio Ranieri on the verge of making history in the English Premier League with midlands club Leicester City, Marco Jackson breaks down his achievements with the Foxes.
When Claudio Ranieri joined Leicester City last summer, he was seen as a steadying pair of hands after the departure of the wildly inconsistent Nigel Pearson.
With his Foxes side sitting seven points clear at the top of the Premier League and with just five games to go, it is fair to say he has exceeded expectation.
His team continue to confound all comers. In the climate of a English top flight where it was a shock that a club as storied as Liverpool got into the top four, Leicester’s astronomic rise is unprecedented.
And while the club’s fans have enjoyed the ride, from disbelief to chants of ‘we’re gonna win the league’, Ranieri’s outlook remains resolute.
He continues to take the season one game at a time, looking forward only to the next opponents, be they West Ham this weekend, or Swansea the next.
The Roman retains the same demeanour as has typified his coaching career, but his ideas seem to have been perfectly focused this year, as though the improbable dream has channeled his talents like a lightning rod.
For a man who was once known as ‘the Tinkerman’, his team have been settled. More than seven Leicester players have been involved in more than 30 games so far.
In truth, Ranieri accepted the nickname with good grace, though it was never true of his Chelsea team any more than any other side of the era. The size of his squad, coupled with the number of fronts he had to fight on, necessitated that he had to rotate his players.
It worked. Chelsea progressed under his charge. From sixth twice, up to fourth then up to second. His last seasons were under Roman Abramovich, whose patience was not as forgiving as his predecessor.
Yet it was the second that came to typify his career. With Juventus, Roma and Monaco, his sides often went on good runs, but none had the wherewithal to usurp a dominant champion.
His nemesis in Italy was Inter, whereas in France the club in his way was Paris Saint Germain. It was not just Ranieri’s Monaco who lost that particular fight.
As he failed to take his teams over the finish line, he found himself surplus to requirements, a regular rider on the merry-go-round. The jobs kept coming, but each time represented a step down, albeit a small step.
Then from Monaco he went to Greece, a decision that proved an almost entirely unmitigated failure. Somehow he transformed a stubborn, defensive team who struggled for goals into a pathetic shadow of a side that somehow managed to lose the Faroe Islands.
After that, it seemed as though Ranieri might struggle for employment. It was a surprise when he appeared at Leicester, but it has proved an inspired move.
Although the Foxes were fortunate to stay in the Premier League last season, Nigel Pearson had found a formula that worked. From April 2015, they won seven of nine games and soared from 20th to 14th.
This run was not forgotten at the start of this season. When Leicester started to appear at the top end of the table, Ranieri was dismissed as someone carrying on the good work of his predecessor.
He silenced that doubt when the Foxes went on a run of comebacks, but then his side were questioned again. This time, consensus was that they were too reliant on the goals of Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez.
Ranieri changed again. Vardy scored 15 goals before Christmas, he has six since then. Mahrez had 15 at the same point, and just three since.
Of their 14 clean sheets, 11 have come in 2016. No players were brought in to achieve this, it was a purely tactical change. Suddenly, the focus went from outscoring the opposition to simply winning.
Veteran that he is, Ranieri will not have been influenced by external comments. He will know that going behind and surging back to win cannot be a long term strategy.
Having fostered a team spirit through such simple events as team pizza nights, his players eventually did what he told them to do. They learned from their mistakes, as their coach has from his.
They, like him, have gone on to earn their spell in the limelight and nobody begrudges either their impending success.
Whatever happens next season, Ranieri will be responsible for taking Leicester into Europe like nobody since Thomas Cook. He has been the architect of one of football’s best stories of recent years and written a chapter in his own football life that will never be forgotten. Not a bad year’s work.
