Claudio Ranieri confirmed yesterday that he would like to coach another English club if he leaves Chelsea this summer. Despite his experiences at Stamford Bridge over recent months, the Italian said he still regards the Premiership as an enjoyable and stress-free place to work.
Ranieri has previously taken charge of teams in Italy and Spain and believes England has the best environment for a coach. Though this season he has seen Chelsea search for a new manager and announce it would be a failure for him to win nothing, that has not undermined his attachment to English football.
Asked whether he wants to stay in the country if he leaves Chelsea, Ranieri said simply: "Yes." He feels there is better perspective and less pressure than in Italy, and drew a parallel with Spain. "Both countries like football and enjoy football," he said. "In Italy it's work."
Warming to his theme, he added: "In Spain and in England there isn't stress. It's a sport. Everybody wants to win but here when you draw or lose giving everything, the fans say: 'Don't worry - next week it will be better.' If you draw or lose in Italy the stones are waiting for you. Then the managers are focused too much because of the pressure. When I say that here there isn't any pressure it's because in Italy it's worse.
"When I was young I loved football. I went everywhere to try to play football and I enjoyed it a lot. In Italy when you start to play in a professional way slowly you lose the boy. Peter Pan dies and you must work: stress, stress. Then I went to Spain and said: 'Oh my God.' The boy came back.
"In England my first meeting was with Gianfranco [Zola] and he said 'Spain will be fantastic, here it will be better' and it's true. You come here and you enjoy it. The stress I put on myself is the worst stress because I want to win always."
With so much uncertainty over his future, it was fitting that Ranieri revealed he draws inspiration from the Rudyard Kipling poem If - "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you" - and Ranieri talked of how a particular line had stuck from his childhood: "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same."
"When I was young I read that," Ranieri said. "Victory and defeat is the same: impostors. I understand triumph and failure as impostors because both can change the man. I want to stay in the middle. Not one or the other can change my mind."
Ranieri stressed that it was important for him to be able to look in the mirror at the end of the season and know he has done his best for the club. In an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, he said Chelsea's owner Roman Abramovich "wanted to change [coach] last July but he didn't find what he was looking for".
"I'm very, very calm because I put everything out of my mind," he said. "I'm very focused on the match. It's not important what happens around me. I think it's my personality and character but also it's my Italian schooling to be focused."
He believes his players will not be distracted during today's game against Everton by the thought of Tuesday's Champions League semi-final first leg at Monaco. "If you win there's a good atmosphere to go to Monaco, like after the Tottenham match there was a good atmosphere [for the quarter-final at Arsenal]," he said. "That's very important."
Ranieri said Carlo Cudicini will have a metal rod removed from his hand on Thursday and believes the goalkeeper should be in contention to face Southampton on May 1.
