Claudio Ranieri has called for one mighty last push from Leicester City’s action heroes to ensure a Hollywood climax to their blockbuster Premier League campaign. The Italian will take his team to Old Trafford on Sunday knowing that victory over Manchester United would make Leicester English champions for the first time, but he warned that his players must stay focused if they are to make history.
“We are doing something special and, of course, I’m very proud for everybody from Leicester, for our community,” said Ranieri. “But it is important to finish the story as well as the American movies: always the happy ending.”
Ranieri was speaking at his regular pre-match conference, which this week took place amid a hopeful, almost festive atmosphere. With the city of Leicester festooned in the club’s colours as part of a “Backing the Blues” campaign designed to help the team get the three points they need from their remaining three matches, Ranieri held court in front of far more journalists than usual – in excess of 70 from all over the world – and dealt with a slightly wacky variety of questions, about everything from his tactics to his singing voice to his favourite fairytale (“Robin Hood,” he replied, before adding: “One day I will go to Nottingham – but not next season!”).
He made other quips, playfully told a Nigerian journalist he loved him (“I love you too” came the reply) and turned down a request from an Italian journalist to sing a song (“I am not a singer, I am a bell: dilly ding, dilly dong!” he quipped, before feigning panic and warning: “Hey, don’t write ‘Claudio is a bell!’”). It was, at times, a press conference worthy of Leicester’s season: no one seemed exactly sure what was going on but everyone agreed it was wonderful.
Despite the wisecracks and bizarre detours, however, Ranieri kept coming back to his serious point: “We’re fighting to try to make this dream become reality but it is not yet. I can understand all the happiness around the city but that is the fans. We have to work. On Sunday there will be a very, very tough match. It is important for us to make a perfect game, the best performance away of the season.” He said he considered February’s 3-1 win at Manchester City to be his side’s best display. “It will be difficult to do better than that,” he said.
With Louis van Gaal’s side needing a win to boost their hopes of a top-four finish, Ranieri warned that his players must pay particular attention to Anthony Martial, whose winning goal in last Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final took his tally to 14 goals in his first season at United. Ranieri knows the French youngster well, having managed him at Monaco. “He is a phenomenal player,” he said. “He was amazing three or four years ago and now he has had a very good impact on the Premier League. I think he will go forward a lot.”
United paid £36m for Martial last summer, about four times more than Leicester have ever forked out for a player. Given the disparity of resources, Ranieri knows that, after this season, a team such as Leicester are unlikely to find themselves in a position to win the title at Old Trafford any time soon. “Once every 50 years a little team with less money can beat the biggest,” he said.
Robert Huth is the only Leicester player to have won the Premier League – with Chelsea in 2005 and 2006 – but Ranieri says it is not difficult to ensure his team remain free of nerves. “I don’t tell them to stay calm,” he said. “I say: ‘Stay hungry.’” He believes that the challenge for his players is to evolve beyond being surprising winners to become a team that conquer when expected to do so.
“When I spoke to my players I said that with everything that is coming it is important to improve our mentality,” said Ranieri. “For the first time in their lives they just work with the pressure of winning something. Then all attention of the media is good [and they have] to be solid, to improve, improve, improve. That is how the big teams and the big names work: under pressure. And they have to improve this. Because in the next year they are to be used to staying at the top of the league and in Europe and fight for something bigger and bigger. This is their mission: every time a little more, a little higher.”
