The football world is in shock. Well I suppose, the football world is in a perpetual shock, because it's football. But Claudio Ranieri has been sacked by the current Premier League Champion Leicester City FC. A sad state of affairs to be in right now and it confronts us with the horror of modern football.
Let us go back in time, back to the sacking of Nigel Pearson at the end of the 2014/2015 season. It all started there. Poor decision making of the board and the owners started in that time. Pearson rescued the club from sure relegation and ended the season with a 14th place on the table, after being promoted to the Premier League. Now that's an achievement in itself. There's a general consensus of not liking Pearson, but take the personality away and you have a good manager. No one understood why he had to go if you look at the results and that was poor decision number one. We now have a club without a manager and possibly fighting relegation in the 2015/2016 season.
Appointing a manager who had absolutely no experiencing of playing relegation football, was a wild guess. By appointing Claudio Ranieri, they got a semi big name. A big name for Leicester City and personally I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Looking back at it now, it seemed like a brilliant decision from the board to get him managing the Foxes, ultimately getting the Premier League medals and trophy. A fantastic achievement and it will be written in any football history book that Leicester city went from relegation candidate to title contender within 9 months. It's a fairytale and it's only topped by the legendary Nottingham Forrest from Brian Clough and Peter Taylor in the late '70's.
5000/1 is a tremendous achievement, nothing is going to take that away from Leicester City or Claudio Ranieri, but this was an incident. The top teams were in terrible form and yes Leicester was up there last season, doing there thing and banging in the
Prem. But The Foxes were always going to be less prominent in this season, for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, when you are champion no one's going to underestimate your abilities. Where Leicester City had the advantage of being the underdog in most matches last season and could play counter-attack on the pitch, this season they are regarded as the team to beat. That's a whole different mentality and approach, for both Leicester and their opponents. To expect them to be title contenders would be a mad man's thought in my opinion.
Second they sold the very key to their succes. The glue that held the team together. Fair play to Vardy, Mahrez, Morgan, Schmeichel, Fuchs and all those men, but Kanté was the motor of the succes and selling him, made it very, very hard. The oiled machine that became champion last year, struggled from day one and that's why they are at the place they are right now. Now we have to bear in mind, that Leicester were going to struggle and that it wouldn't be like the 1970's when Nottingham Forest was the boss in the first division.
The third and very important reason is the Champions League. I personally think that Ranieri was told that the Champions League was very important to the owners. From an owners perspective, I can see why they would think that. Just for the record, I don't agree with them, but there's a lot of money to be made in the Champions League and it certainly became a priority for them. Leicester are not doing well at all in the premier league, but are in the knock out phase of the tournament and got a decent result in Sevilla, so they might go through to the next round.
If we take this all into account, it's fair to say that Leicester is at a place where they deserve to be. But one thing that really frustrates me is how the club treated Claudio Ranieri. We are talking about the manager who won the Premier League, who brought Champions League football to Leicester and has created goodwill for the club from all over the world. That goodwill is there for a great part because of the humble Claudio Ranieri. All that goodwill is gone when the club decided to part ways with their former manager. It's disloyalty.
Okay, Ranieri failed to get the team together, failed to perform. That's true and as manager he is accountable for the result, surely. But the way Leicester City disposed of their succesful manager, is just disgraceful. The man that has brought you fame, everlasting fame and exposure. Casted away like dogshit. Is this what modern football has become? That your brand is more important than loyalty to the people who have brought you that very commercial succes? It shows lack of compassion and empathy
They have sacked a manager, a dying breed in the football game. A manager involved with the community, fans and club. He loves the club and has an emotional attachment to it. He's genuinely concerned with the wellbeing of his club and that's what makes the loss even greater for The Foxes. They now need to find someone who can avoid relegation and still can keep their Champions League hopes up. That will be incredibly difficult and the names I've heard, are not going to that to be honest.
It's very sad and I think Ranieri would've avoided relegation and that would've been a great succes as well. Going to miss that dude.
