“Mushrooms,” Claudio Ranieri says, happy to continue his imaginary pizza‑based incentive scheme for Leicester City results. “If we keep a clean sheet against Arsenal the boys can have extra toppings this week.”
Ranieri is not quite the genial old duffer he projects in his public appearances. Those who know him say that even at 63 he is still much sharper and more thorough than he lets on, though he has been around enough clubs to know that making the job look easy is half the battle.
The Italian has certainly done that since taking over at the King Power Stadium. Leicester are the last unbeaten team in the league, when Ranieri resumes his Premier League acquaintance with Arsenal on Saturday he does so from a position above them in the table, and he admits the same light-hearted approach on the training pitch is part of the key to success.
It may be that after working under the somewhat over-intense Nigel Pearson last season the Leicester players are ready for a laugh and a joke, or it may be that Ranieri’s cosmopolitan track record suits a side that ended their last match with 11 nationalities on the pitch. The manager just gives one of his shrugs.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But you have to have a relationship with the players. The squad know me quite well now. I like to have a laugh at the training ground because when you go to work with a sad face you will not do your job very well. But when we start work we are deadly serious. I change my face then and the players know the difference.”
Leicester came back from two goals down to draw at Stoke in their last game, never the easiest thing to do, but what struck most as remarkable was the way the visitors were applauded off by their own fans at half-time despite looking likely to lose the game. “Our supporters understand what we are trying to do on the pitch,” Ranieri says. “If they see we are doing our best they get behind us. All I ever ask of the players is that they give the maximum, and as long as the fans see that in a game they are happy.”
Happy is probably an underestimation of how Leicester followers feel about the club’s start to the season. Ranieri’s appointment was not greeted with universal enthusiasm, given his age, his 11 years out of the Premier League and his short and painful experience with the Greece national side, yet right from the first day of the season everything seems to have clicked. Arsenal represent the biggest test to date, however, and Ranieri is realistic about what might be achieved over the course of the season.
“Arsenal are a fantastic side, we will have to play a perfect game to beat them,” he says. “Our fans can dream about winning, but we have to stay very calm and work very hard. You always do in the Premier League. We have made an excellent start, better than I thought we would if I am honest, but sooner or later we will lose. In this league a defeat is always around the corner. When I came here I obviously wanted to make a good start – that is important for any manager – but I was not thinking much further ahead than winning the first match. When we did that we thought: ‘Let’s see if we can win the second,’ and so it went on.”
That is only half the story, though, and Ranieri knows it. The point salvaged at Stoke was the second successive game in which the Foxes went two goals down. A week earlier, against Aston Villa, the same deficit was turned into a 3-2 victory. “We know how to fight,” Ranieri says. “Perhaps the team learned that at the end of last season. All that I can say is that we know how to respond when the situation is desperate. I don’t think we should keep giving away two-goal starts, because it is never easy scoring goals when you are behind in a game, but when we are desperate we play well.”
Perhaps that is Pearson’s gift to the club, for few imagined the urbane Ranieri would turn the Foxes into a team of terriers. “Ours is a very friendly dressing room,” he says, as if to prove the point. “But the players are very supportive of each other. When we rewatch videos of games and N’Golo Kanté gets forward and wins the ball with his pressing, everyone cheers. Kanté can still improve a lot, but with experience I think he can play in the same position [Claude] Makélélé used to play for me at Chelsea. Makélélé started off as a winger, you know, when he played for Celta Vigo.”
Many of Ranieri’s current charges would be unfamiliar with the Chelsea Makélélé, let alone the Celta Vigo one, though the manager is doubtless improving their education on a daily basis. A manager with more than a dozen major clubs on his CV may have been a left-field choice for a Leicester side expecting another relegation scrap, but it is possible that preconception was wrong on two counts. So far Leicester have not looked back.
