The dead man walking walks away again

We've never gone short of bizarre things said by football managers. Even before the influx of foreign coaches, there were plenty of notable (or notorious) things uttered by the likes of Ron Atkinson, Brian Clough and Private Eye's "ashen-faced" Ron Knee, beleaguered boss of Neasden FC, and the magazine's go-to foil for anything football related. But the arrival of managers from abroad has brought with it the occasional mangling of their second (or third or - take note Brits - fourth language).

Last season, Claudio Ranieri brought us his baffling, but endearing "dilly-ding, dilly-dong". And yesterday, Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp, in reacting to Leicester City's sacking of Ranieri on Thursday night, declared: "For me there have been a few strange decisions in 16/17: Brexit, Trump, Ranieri.". There. Right there, the sacking of a football manager bracketed in with Britain's unexpected European departure and the insane Dorito being elected President of the United States.

But then while Klopp's sentiment may have been slightly wonky, it wasn't misplaced. Even José Mourinho chose to compare his own most recent sacking from Chelsea with Ranieri's from Leicester on Thursday (an irony, given that it was defeat to Ranieri's Leicester City that precipitated Mourinho's departure from Chelsea, as manager of the-then defending champions slid closer to the trap door, exactly as Leicester are doing now). Perhaps Mourinho's sporting of a Manchester United training top bearing the initials "CR" was laying it on a little too thick.

It would be the coldest of hearts who'd dismiss the fact that Claudio Ranieri is a much-loved individual. In fact, he'd been that way long before Leicester invited him up the M1 to take over a club desperate to stave off another relegation battle, and which ended up winning the most prestigious - and lucrative - prize in English club football.

Despite a somewhat so-so history at clubs in his native Italy and elsewhere in Europe (Gary Lineker reacted to his appointment with a dismissive "Claudio Ranieri? Really?" tweet), he was seen as a decent, dignified, endearing man. Prior to Leicester, his previous appointment as manager of the Greek national team lasted barely four months, prompting Italian football writer Tommaso Pellizzari to tell the Financial Times’ that Ranieri was “the perfect loser, with a capital L”, and that “everyone in Italy thought he was very nice, polite, kind, but please never call him to my team”. Chelsea fans still hold a torch for the man dubbed 'The Tinkerman', building the foundations that Mourinho built on to win successive Premier League titles in his first two seasons at the club, having replaced Ranieri, the ‘dead man walking’ whom the capricious Roman Abramovich fired in favour of the dashing Portuguese, fresh from winning the Champions League with Porto.

And here is the reality: before Ranieri came to Leicester, he actually had a decent managerial record. It just wasn't laden with glory, all the time. But compared with Arsène Wenger's most recent history at Arsenal, actually, not that bad. Moreover, in winning the Premier League handsomely with Leicester - who'd been 5000-1 outsiders at the start of the 15/16 season, Ranieri endeared himself to the nation. Even the hardest-hearted, deepest-embedded tribalists who unwaveringly follow their clubs without any consideration for any other team, fell for the endearing charm of the Roman. The sadness, then, at his sacking is entirely justified.

"Yesterday my dream died", said Ranieri in a statement. "After the euphoria of last season and being crowned champions, all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester. Sadly this was not to be. The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever. My heartfelt thanks to everybody at the club, everybody who was part of what we achieved, but mostly to the supporters. You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too. No-one can ever take away what we achieved together and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will. It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget. It's been a pleasure and an honour to be a champion with all of you."

Nothing can ever take away the fact that Ranieri achieved the almost unfathomably impossible with Leicester. But something has irretrievably been broken this season. Eerily, like Chelsea under Mourinho in his last spell, the players that Ranieri had so delightfully motivated to win the Premier League, have stopped playing for him. While it may have been classless for Leicester City's Thai owners to have sacked the very man who'd brought them unexpected success only last May, the club is once again staring down the barrel of relegation, in a tailspin that it doesn't seem to be pulling out of anytime soon.

Quite what the "painful but necessary" sacking of Ranieri will achieve is not known. The perceived wisdom was that he'd lost the dressing room, that players had actively sought to undermine him with the club's owners over his changing tactics and tinkering. And while there might be historic precedent for this, it seems frustratingly sad that the players Ranieri took over line to remarkable victory in May should have become so jaded and mutinous in February. Perhaps, as he did at Chelsea, 'Uncle' Guus Hiddink is now the solution to sooth bruised egos and help find the players' collective mojo again.

The reality is that it's probably too late. I do, actually, see the logic of Leicester's decision, or at least the business rationale of Premier League survival for the club's owners. But here we enter the choppy emotional waters of what makes football. Shareholders might have a different view, but for a season at least, Claudio Ranieri was the unlikely star of a fairytale, and a box office hit at that. What a sad, sad sequel.