Claudio Ranieri: 'How I took Leicester City to the top of the Premier League'

Claudio Ranieri photographed at Leicester City football club, in May Credit: Giles Price 

• Tom Rowley

28 May 2016 • 7:00am

Some time before the final whistle, the plaudits replaced the scepticism. No sooner had Leicester City pulled off the preposterous in winning the Premier League, than the architect of that triumph, Claudio Ranieri, was being hailed as the manager of the month and serenaded in front of a home crowd by his friend and fellow Italian, the tenor Andrea Bocelli.
Ranieri had become, in the words of his 96-year-old mother, the 'King of England’. Yet his office at the city’s King Power Stadium feels more like an upmarket waiting room than a victor’s palace. Ranieri does not sit behind a grand desk but slouches on a long sofa fixed to the wall, lit by soft blue lights.

 Ranieri as a Roma player in 1973 

Behind him, where I expected to find framed press cuttings chronicling his 30 years as a coach, there are instead portraits of the league’s other managers (so they can recognise themselves when they come to visit). The fridge in the corner is full of alcohol, but he hardly drinks the stuff.
'It’s difficult for me to show my happiness,’ he tells me when we meet, a week after his players took the title. 'But I am very happy. Believe me. I don’t show it but it’s inside me.’ Displays of emotion are not in Ranieri’s character. Take the day of the crucial game between Chelsea and Tottenham that ended up handing the league to Leicester.
On that day of intense anticipation, when everyone else was preparing to celebrate the long-awaited victory if it came, Ranieri flew back to Rome to have lunch with his mother, Renata, even though he knew it meant he would miss the match that evening. She was having trouble with the batteries in her pacemaker, he explains now, and he thought he ought to check on her.

He might not show it, but Ranieri knows he has achieved something remarkable: he calls the Leicester story a favola – a fairy tale

When the club’s owner, the Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, learnt of his plans, he lent Ranieri his private jet so he could make it back in time for kick-off. But rather than joining a party with the players, Ranieri had a leisurely dinner at home with his wife of 40 years, Rosanna, and two Italian club officials, and watched the game on television.

Roman Abramovich welcomes Ranieri back to Stamford Bridge  Credit: Getty 

Ranieri – who stood to gain a £5 million bonus and to double his salary if Chelsea won this game, or it was a draw – remained calm throughout, sitting back in his armchair. The only time he displayed emotion was when Eden Hazard scored the equaliser for Chelsea that gave Leicester the title. Then he allowed himself a glass of champagne. Just one.
Soon after, his Italian staff left to join the party in the streets; Ranieri and his wife stayed at home. They switched over from the post-match commentary to a comedy chosen by his wife.
And so, on the night his club triumphed for the first time in its 132-year history, on the night the 64-year-old won the major title that had eluded him all his life, Claudio Ranieri went to bed at the normal time and was asleep not long after 11pm.

From unlikely lads to winners

He might not show it, but Ranieri knows he has achieved something remarkable: he calls the Leicester story a favola – a fairy tale. Dubbed the 'unlikely lads’, his squad of cast-offs and free transfers – at 5,000 to 1, the rank outsiders – had somehow become the champions of English football.  When we meet, he still seems a little shocked.
Has he realised the scale of his accomplishment yet? 'I realise because a lot of people come. But, of course, all the emotion? No. Maybe we have to [wait] a little more into the holidays and  then maybe you can realise what happened  this season.’  What happened, he soon tells me, is that, even early on, he felt a kind of energy about the place.

Coaching Atletico Madrid during a match against Sporting Lisbon in 1999 Credit: Getty 

'I met the Leicester people and I felt good electricity, a good feeling between me and the owner, between me and the players and between me and the other staff. It was amazing. I said, “We can do something special,” but of course never, never, never I thought about the title.’

Controlling his temper

First, he dispensed with the myth that he is always calm, a foil to managers such as Sir Alex Ferguson, who used to deal out his notorious 'hairdryer treatment’.
In fact, Ranieri says, he was brutal when he needed to be. 'You see me very calm. When I get crazy, I am going very crazy. I get crazy when I see something’s wrong or when the attitude is no good. I can take the table and…’ Now the quiet man is miming throwing a table on its side.

Thousands line streets for Leicester City's Premier League victory parade Play! 01:13

Are you sure, Mr Ranieri? 'Yes, don’t worry. You think, “Oh, nice man.” I change the face. Don’t worry. I want people to come to me with a laugh, but [if they cross the line] I change.’  Mostly, though, he did remain calm. When he realised the team had a real chance of clinching the title, he gave the players a pep talk.
'OK, we need to keep going with the same mentality,’ he told them. 'Remember, this is a crazy league: this year or never more.’ When he managed Chelsea in the early 2000s, he was labelled 'the Tinkerman’ for constantly changing the line-up; some players criticised this practice for undermining their confidence.

Pizza, cocktails and retirement

At Leicester, he focused instead on nurturing esprit de corps, ringing an imaginary bell and yelling 'dilly ding, dilly dong’ whenever he needed his lads to give him more.
If they stuck to the drill, he told them, he would take them  all out… for pizza. (When they did indeed win the league, he took them to a pizzeria, one that serves margheritas for £6.25.)

A training session while he was the manager of Chelsea in 2004 Credit: Getty 

Now the league is won, Ranieri is suddenly in demand. His phone has rung constantly with congratulations (he won’t tell me who is calling), and the mayor of Leicester, grateful for a victory he says could bring in more than £100 million in tourism revenue, is considering erecting a statue of the modest Italian. Ranieri is facing the novel task of lowering expectations.