Claudio Ranieri has heaped rather unusual praise on two of his Leicester City players, Jamie Vardy and N’Golo Kanté, describing the former as a “fantastic horse” and the latter as someone who appears to be performing with a “pack full of batteries hidden in his shorts”.
The manager made the remarks during an interview with US website The Players’ Tribune. During the discussion, Ranieri spoke about how it feels like a “dream” to see Leicester top of the Premier League in early April, particularly given the plan at the start of the season was simple to avoid relegation. “Forty points. That was the goal. That was the total we needed to give our fans another season of Premier League football,” he said.
It is his comments regarding Vardy and Kanté that stand out the most, although they should perhaps not come as a surprise given some of Ranieri’s remarks during this most incredible of campaigns for Leicester. He recently described himself as “the sausageman” after discovering a Leicester butcher had named a sausage after him and before that revealed to journalists he had bought all of the club’s players and staff little bells for Christmas.
“From the beginning when something was wrong I’ve been saying: ‘Dilly-ding, dilly-dong, wake up, wake up!’” he said. “So on Christmas Day I bought for all the players and all the staff a little bell. It was just a joke.”
Speaking about Vardy, who has scored 19 goals for Leicester this season, second only to Harry Kane in the Premier League scoring chart, Ranieri said: “This is not a footballer. This is a fantastic horse.” The description comes only a few weeks after he described his entire team as horses, following their 1-0 win against Crystal Palace.
Moving on to Kanté, who arrived for £5.6m from Caen in August and has gone on to become a key part of Leicester’s midfield, Ranieri added: “This player, he was running so hard I thought he must have a pack full of batteries hidden in his shorts. He never stopped running in training.”
Speaking of the squad in general, he said: “When I arrived and I saw the quality of these players, I knew how good they could be. I knew we had a chance to survive in the Premier League.
“We are a little team, so we have to fight with all our heart, with all our soul. I don’t care the name of the opponent. All I want is for you to fight. If they are better than us, OK, congratulations. But they have to show us they are better.”
Leicester’s 1-0 victory over Southampton on Sunday extended their lead over second-placed Tottenham Hotspur to seven points and means they are now, at most, four victories away from winning their first top-flight title.
“We have six games remaining, and we must continue fighting with our heart and our soul,” Ranieri said. “This is a small club that is showing the world what can be achieved through spirit and determination. Twenty-six players. Twenty-six different brains but one heart.”
