There is a bit of a myth about football: that it is somehow fair. It may be true that at the end of a season the league table does not lie, but you only have to look at the vagaries of cup competitions, and the number of times that the team who finish third fail to make it through the play-offs, to realise that this can be an iniquitous and inequitable game.
So it is with the people in it. They can be treated appallingly on the personal whims of others in positions of power. A few years ago Jupp Heynckes was sacked as coach of Real Madrid after they had won the European Cup. Claudio Ranieri could find himself in the same position at Chelsea, the latest name in the frame for a job the Italian is looking increasingly likely to vacate at season's end emerging last week as Ottmar Hitzfeld of Bayern Munich.
It seems that Roman Abramovich was not overly impressed by Chelsea's disposal of Stuttgart recently, yielding just a single goal over two legs. Why can't we be more like Real Madrid or Arsenal? The Spanish capital has the galacticos, the English capital the gallic-ticos.
Where does all this leave Ranieri? In his affable, philosophical way, he will probably just smile, pick up his pay-off cheque and emerge somewhere else in England, Italy or Spain with his reputation enhanced after overhauling Manchester United and reaching the last eight of the Champions League.
Unfairness can have its compensations, iniquity can test character. And iniquity can happen for a reason: to get you to a more appropriate place. Ranieri for Tottenham anyone?
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