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.

Whatsa Mata you? Hey, gotta no respect!

"Leave it, bruv, he ain't worth it"

This time last year I was promising myself that I wouldn't blog so much about José Mourinho and would concentrate more on his then-team's defence of the Premier League title. How wrong I was.

Inevitably, however, Chelsea's Community Shield encounter with Arsenal became all about Mourinho, or rather his mindgames with Arsène Wenger and the handshake that wasn't. But, hey, it was only a friendly and Eden Hazard's fluffed shot in front of recently transferred teammate Petr Čech meant nothing for the season about to unfold. Except that Chelsea's next game, against Swansea in the season's first league fixture (exactly a year ago today...), saw the Portuguese's ridiculous meltdown over Dr. Eva Carneiro. This subsequently led to a mental collapse within the team which ultimately resulted in Chelsea dropping to 16th place by December 17, followed by the manager's by-now predictable departure under "mutual consent".

There was, however, something of 'suicide-by-cop' about it all. Many were suspicious about Mourinho coming back to Chelsea in the first place, suggesting that it was only because the Manchester United job he so coveted was not available. Whether this is true, we can only now speculate, but certainly within a matter of days of Mourinho getting the heave-ho from Stamford Bridge, his PR machine was doing a sterling job in keeping him visible, with no shortage of hints that he would finally be on his way to Old Trafford (despite the hapless Louis van Gaal actually being in the job).

It didn't take people - and I single out Twitter people in particular here - many days, either, to start ringing the bell of doom for Juan Mata, the intelligent midfielder who'd won Chelsea's Player Of The Year award two seasons running before Mourinho packaged him off to Manchester citing spurious claims about the player's defensive ability. Poor thing, the Twitter wags snarked, no sooner has he settled at United than the man who unceremoniously sent him there comes after him.

So, fast-forward 12 months from my original vow. Mourinho is back at Wembley for the Community Shield but this time as manager of Manchester United, finally. He has just beaten defending Premier League champions Leicester with a 2-1 win secured by Zlatan Ibrahimovic - a classic Mourinho signing: inconsistent centre forward, getting on a bit, but deadly when the chance arises (viz Didier Drogba). To add to his hubris, he is on the cusp of signing Paul Pogba from Juventus for a fee reported to be £89 million or more. So, The Special One returns, with a special team at his disposal. Amongst it is Juan Mata.

At Wembley, the Spaniard sits patiently on the bench. Twitter notices his slightly forlorn look, the No.8 emblazoned on the left thigh of his shorts. In a forest of vanity squad numbers (first team players at AC Milan have shirt numbers in the 90s...), 8 remains the number of central midfield authority. At United it represents the legacy of Nicky Butt and Paul Ince and their presence, while at Chelsea, it is Frank Lampard and his imperious record of 211 goals from the position.

Jesse Lingard had, arguably, played the pivotal part in Manchester United returning to Wembley in the first place, substituting Mata in the FA Cup Final in May and scoring the winning goal that brought the curtain down on the van Gaal era with something of a wry smile. So, perhaps it was fitting - a reward, even - that the 23-year-old winger got the nod ahead of Mata for the 2016-17 curtain raiser. Mata, smart man that he is, probably saw this for what it was, too, but when Lingard came off injured in the 63rd minute, he was on. Exactly 30 minutes later he was off again...and looked furious.

Surprisingly, player petulance doesn't happen often as often as the back pages might suggest, but when it does, it usually shows more than intended. When a disgusted Diego Costa threw his training bib in Mourinho's direction last November after a touchline warm-up came to nothing at White Hart Lane, it was clear how bad the "palpable" disconnect was between manager and players. Mourinho was gone within a fortnight. The sight, then, of Mata being apparently restrained by United coach Ricardo Formosinho while shooting a look at his manager that definitely could kill underlined the precarious state of Mourinho's man management techniques, which failed him so dismally at Chelsea last season.

"I needed to take off the smallest player [Mata] because we were expecting a lot of long balls," Mourinho said, unconvincingly after the match, which ended just two minutes after the substitution. Now, some might see this as simply Mourinho shoring up his defence, a position consistent with his notorious 'win-at-any-cost' bus parking. Others might see this as Mourinho at his most insensitive and vindictive. "You don't do that unless you are trying to send a message," said pundit Danny Murphy on the BBC's Match Of The Day. "[Mourinho and Mata] have a lot of history at Chelsea and he has embarrassed him in front of his supporters and his family. He is basically saying to him you are not important and he has done it publicly. I can't see him still being at the club at the end of August."

Nor, probably, would Mata himself, who joins the likes of Bastian Schweinsteiger, Daley Blind and Marcos Rojo as casualities of the new United manager's apparently ruthless trimming of a squad he inherited from van Gaal. Mata, for the record, has remained remarkably sanguine and professional, posting pictures of himself with the Community Shield trophy on Facebook and Twitter.

There are arguments, however, that Mata never recovered the form he had at Chelsea since his-then club record £37.1 million transfer to Old Trafford in January 2014. He has, since then, only started 75 Premier League games for United, with suggestions coming out of Old Trafford that van Gaal shared Mourinho's concerns about the midfielder's pace and defensive contribution.

That, however, won't wash with Chelsea fans, who saw in Mata a clever, creative player who thoroughly deserved his consecutive player of the year awards, and whose intellect and articulate, cultural interest endeared him so. Before Mourinho's return to Chelsea in June 2013, Mata had been Chelsea's creative heart under André Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo and Rafa Benitez, contributing goals and some vital assists. As "@BlueTaintedNick" put it on Twitter yesterday, "How many players left at peak and retained the affection like Mata?". The answer is not many, but they'd be led by Lampard, Drogba, Gianfranco Zola, Eidur Gudjohnsen and, without hesitation, Mata.

For all our affection for Mata, his relationship with Mourinho may simply be down to preference and chemistry. In Mourinho's case, Mata isn't his preference and, it is patently clear, there is no chemistry. But while Mourinho may have his tactical reasons for not favouring Spaniard, the way he has gone about expressing them - now twice - leaves much to be desired. Over three-and-a-bit and two-and-a-bit seasons, we sang the Special One's praises from the rafters of Stamford Bridge, on trains and planes to European destinations, and in the face of overwhelming evidence of his sociopathic tendencies. We defended him - rightly - from the massed ranks of envious trolls as we watched the silverware come tumbling in.

But now he's at Manchester United, do we turn on him, and especially over his treatment of a much-loved former Chelsea player? Probably, but that shouldn't come as any surprise. It's what the tribality of football demands.

Money and football - it's back to business

Picture: adidas

48 hours ago we were celebrating the closest thing modern professional football has come to altruism - the "fairy tale" (© all newspapers) of Leicester City winning the Barclays Premier League. The common view has been that Leicester, unlike the footballing behemoths they beat to the title, did so on modest funding and a humble team ethic that reflects their genial manager, Claudio Ranieri (best not, though, dwell on events at the end of last season at Leicester and that video...).

We shouldn't too carried away. Leicester don't - and weren't, going into this season - exactly represent a rags-to-riches story. The media may have painted their victory as some sort of David-and-Goliath mismatch, but we're hardly talking about part-time postal workers and milkmen taking on the elite. Certainly the Leicester players will have increased their personal values with this season's unlikely, odds-shattering title win, and no doubt some will progress from millionaire status to multi-millionaires. And that's when the trouble will start.

The Premier League - and the incredible money Sky and other television deals pump into it - has been with us now for 24 years. In that time we have seen the car parks of clubs ostentatiously transformed by the sight of de rigeur Ferraris, Porsches, Range Rovers, Lamborghinis and other symbols of the ridiculous wealth bestowed on young men barely out of school-leaving age. On Instagram we see pictures of their homes, their minor palaces in Oxshott, Weybridge, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge. On social media, commentary of Monday night's party at Jamie Vardy's house has focused as much on the opulent chandelier hanging in his kitchen as the team spirit demonstrated by the Leicester players watching the Chelsea and Tottenham draw.

We are quick to judge: how often have I heard and read people complaining about Chelsea's players this season doing very little to justify the incredible salaries they're paid. But there is justification to it. After all, whether we pay exorbitantly for season tickets (as I do) or we buy the products advertised on the television channels that are paying to show the games, we're paying for all this.

It's a touchy subject. Good, then, of Manchester United's Juan Mata to admit in a Spanish TV intervew that his £150,000-a-week wages are "obscene". Mata is one of the most likeable and intelligent figures in the game. Rather than spending his spare time on the golf course, in card schools or chasing women who are not married to him around nightclubs, he has, since his arrival in England, demonstrated a cultured side to the professional footballer, engaging in his new surroundings and frequently writing eloquently about them on his highly readable weekly blog One Hour Behind. He is also an extremely gifted midfielder - I would still love to see him back at Stamford Bridge - but also one who has been able to burst out of the footballing bubble to view it for what it is.

"With respect to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount," Mata said in the interview with the Spanish programme Salvados. "I'd happily take a pay cut if there was less business involvement in the sport. Football is very well remunerated at this level. It's like we live in a bubble. Compared to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount. It's unfathomable. With regard to the world of football, I earn a normal wage but compared to 99.9 per cent of Spain and the rest of the world, I earn an obscene amount."

Mata said he could sympathise with spectators growing jaded with their clubs, especially if the cost of watching doesn't match the performance delivered by the teams themselves. "I can understand what they're talking about," he told Salvados. "The business side of football makes it seem as though the owners are now more important than the fans. It's not like the football of old; there wasn't as much press coverage before," adding, somewhat tellingly: "or as many interested parties looking for their cut."

"Every player thinks he's Maradona when he joins a big club," Mata went on. "That happens to all of us but then you start to notice it in the younger players. You see kids who think they're rock stars, wearing extravagant clothes and driving fancy cars... and sometimes you have to take them aside and have a word."

Perhaps Mata's wisdom should be imparted to Dominic Solanke, the 18-year-old Chelsea youth team striker who has been on loan this season at Vitesse Arnhem. Solanke has demanded a pay rise to take his earnings from £7,000 per week to £50,000, almost double the average annual salary in the UK - and he's still an Under-21 player yet to break into the first team (much like many of his academy peers at Chelsea).

Understandably, Solanke's demands have been met with outrage. Chelsea, however, may have to consider that they have brought it on themselves, with a reputation for paying high salaries. In the current Chelsea first team, 22-year-old goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is on £120,000 a week, Cesc Fàbregas is on £156,000, Diego Costa £185,000 and Eden Hazard a whopping £200,000. Even Radamel Falcao is trousering £140,000 a week in his loan deal from Monaco, and no one has seen or heard from him since he came to Stamford Bridge.

According to The Times today, Chelsea are going to stand firm on Solanke's outrageous claim, threatening to demote him to the academy squad unless he adopts a more realistic view of his worth at this stage of his career. The paper claims that Chelsea want to set an example, so that their younger talents don't let money cloud their development as players. It's an admirable approach. Young football players should continue the traditions of apprenticeship, and not simply see their senior peers - some of whom are barely much older - cruising about in exotic cars and expecting to enjoy the same trappings of success so immediately.

We will never escape the vulgarity of money in football. Few fans will have a problem with their favourite players showing off their wealth, as long as they deliver on the investment we all make in them by performing to the best of their ability on the pitch. The clubs, though, have a responsibility. The relationship between them and us fans can only stretch so far.

On top of ticket price hikes, there have been stealthy increases in the subscription costs of the TV companies who cover the games (on top of the advertising revenues that ultimately we pay for). And there are all the other things that make being a football fan a wallet-shredding ordeal: yesterday Chelsea unveiled its new 2016-2017 home kit - not exactly the best design I've ever seen from adidas, coming somewhere between a silk nightie and children's pyjamas, and advertised by a particularly thuggish-looking Diego Costa - for which you could end up paying more than £105 for the full-replica adult shirt with the name of your favourite player on the back. Add another £5 if you also want the official Premier League badge on the sleeve. "Absolute madness. Pure greed," tweeted Stan Collymore.

I may not be an expert on sports clothing but I can hardly imagine that a shirt, no doubt made in a Far East, low-wage country, will have a bill-of-materials that adds up to that sort of money, not even a shirt with adidas' proprietary "Adi Zero" technology, whatever that is. One can only hazard a guess at what the profit margin is on the shirt - even more if you consider that you'd also be advertising Yokohama tyres in the process of wearing it, seeing as they paid Chelsea £200 million to be on the front.

Whether you're a fan, a club or a player, football is an expensive business. And you don't always get out of it what you put in. A matchday ticket in the Premier League this season averages £30.68 (for reference, Chelsea's range from £52-87), with season ticket prices averaging at £513.95 for the cheapest and £886.21 in the more expensive categories (and remember, that's average). We Chelsea fans pay some of the highest season ticket prices in the league: £750 for the cheapest, £1250 for the most expensive. And the 18 - yes, just 18 - home league games our tickets have entitled us to haven't exactly given much joy this term.

Which brings me back to Leicester City. They may be owned by a Thai billionaire, but they have achieved their remarkable success this season with equally remarkable modesty. On August 8, the opening day of the season, the entire Leicester squad represented a total outlay of £45 million.

Compare this with the investments of the teams who'll end the season below Leicester: Raheem Stirling alone cost Manchester City £49 million, out of a total spend of £153.50 million. And all that got them was fourth place in the Premier League and a Champions League semi-final. For comparison,  Manchester United spent £108 million and lie fifth while Chelsea spent £66 million - in defence of the 2015 title - and are currently ninth. Interestingly, Arsenal's spend was just £10 million and they're now third. Tottenham shelled out £66 million, but their net spend was only £5.7 million, and they're second. Make of all that, what you will.

Of course, we all accept - reluctantly - that the money in football will never return to something more sensible. The argument about how much a footballer earns versus how much a nurse earns may have its merits, but it is ultimately a pointless exercise, no more so than trying to work out how Tom Cruise earns $25 million per film. It is clearly nuts that football salaries in countries like Italy and Spain are in complete disproportion to the social struggles and high unemployment these proud and passionate footballing nations are currently struggling with.

We know it's all about market forces. We know that if a Chelsea won't stump up the wages, a Real Madrid or a Juventus will. But it would be nice, for once, for our football clubs to stop taking us fans for a ride, and behaving with a little less greed and a lot more modesty. Then we might start buying those shirts again.

As Leicester win the title, the search for Elvis goes on

The conventional wisdom is that the British don't value success, whereas Americans regard it as an attainment to be revered. We islanders apparently find it all a tad vulgar and would much prefer to wallow in failure. Why else would our favourite film be The Great Escape, the story of a brave but doomed POW breakout? And why else would the England football team's unofficial brass band play the film's theme music incessantly and in unwitting irony in an attempt to stir support during matches?

The same reasoning lies behind our tolerance of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards, he of the double-glazed spectacles, who truly believed he could fly and became Great Britain's ski jumping hopeful in the 1988 Winter Olympics. At the time (actually, since, too) Britain wasn't exactly a world-beating ski-jumping nation, and Edwards - no sporting failure, by the way - was automatically installed as the underdog. As is the British way, he was obviously unlikely to succeed but gave it it a damn good go. They've now made a movie out of him, too. No doubt the England brass band are learning its score in anticipation of this summer's European championships.

So, while Britain turns its nose up at the desire to be successful, and after a few spins on the pedestal will gleefully find a way to knock off anyone achieving it, we do love an underdog. At Wimbledon we cheer homegrown tennis stars in the face of minuscule chances of them making it to Week 2 (until, of course, Andy Murray comes along and wins it, instantly transmuting himself from "surly Scot" to the greatest Briton since Churchill, Elgar and Henry V). Nearly three-quarters of a century after World War 2 we still watch The Great Escape, The Battle Of Britain and even Dad's Army to remind us of when we were overwhelmingly the underdog. And when we beat nonsensical odds to come out of that period still alive, just.

So what, then, do we now make of Leicester City? Today they are the Barclays Premier League champions. Last season they were nearly relegated from the league itself. At Christmas 2014 they were rock bottom, having only been promoted from the Championship at the end of the previous season, ending a ten-year absence from the top flight. At Christmas 2015 they were on top, and yet at the start of the season bookies would have given you odds of 5000/1 on them actually winning the league. By contrast, you can't get better than 2000/1 for finding Elvis Presley alive.

If ever there was an example of the classic British underdog, Leicester City are it. But more than that. Their success in winning the Premier League with two games to spare is, without succumbing to hyperbole, one of the most remarkable achievements in football and even sporting history. It is hard not sound patronising when describing Leicester's success in such terms, but even their own fans deservedly and raucously celebrating outside the King Power Stadium last night, following Chelsea's tempestous 2-2 draw with Tottenham, were struggling to take it all in. "We're just a small city you've never heard of," said one on Sky News.

When the endearing Claudio Ranieri was appointed Leicester manager, replacing Nigel Pearson after a combustible end to the previous season, there were grave doubts. While he had certainly managed some of Europe's elite sides, including Chelsea, Fiorentina, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Roma and Inter, it had been without any notable success. His previous appointment, as manager of the Greek national team, lasted barely four months. In his native Italy, Ranieri had endured plenty of critics: football writer Tommaso Pellizzari recently told the Financial Times’ Simon Kuper that Ranieri was “the perfect loser, with a capital L”, adding how “everyone in Italy thought he was very nice, polite, kind, but please never call him to my team”.

Gary Lineker, arguably Leicester’s highest profile supporter, even tweeted "Claudio Ranieri? Really?” on hearing of the Roman’s appointment to the Foxes, later being quoted on BreatheSport.com as saying: "Claudio Ranieri is clearly experienced, but this is an uninspired choice by Leicester. It's amazing how the same old names keep getting a go on the managerial merry-go-round." It’s a missive he now surely regrets, but it would be harsh to single him out entirely. At the beginning of the season numerous pundits had Leicester to be relegated this season, having narrowly missed it before. At the other end of the table, predictions were that this would be a straight back-to-back title for Chelsea, or that Arsenal would finally fulfil their promise. Few - if any - predicted that Spurs would come as close.

That Leicester have confounded the experts is a true testament to the mist of reality that hangs over the Premier League. It's been calculated that Manchester United have spent more on players in the two years that Louis van Gaal has been in charge than in Leicester's entire 132-year history. The gulf in class, they say, between the-now English champions and the usual suspects who "should" win it is enormous.

Jamie Vardy was working in a factory not so long ago, playing non-league football. He was even turned down by Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield who? Exactly. And today he is the Football Writers' Association Player Of The Year, and there is even talk of a movie about him. Five years ago Riyad Mahrez was in the sixth tier of French football. Last month he was named the PFA's Player Of The Year.

Leicester should probably be named Team Of The Century. Their Premier League victory may have come at the expense of the oligopoly being dismally unable to mount a challenge this year, but they have led from the very beginning. Even allowing for the somewhat phoney war of the opening weeks of the season, Leicester have simply powered through, playing composed, counter-attacking football, with Vardy and Mahrez scoring goals that have been a pleasure to behold, fed by an endeavouring midfield, a sturdy defence and, in Kasper Schmeichel, a world-class goalkeeper to-be.

The more expensively-assembled elite will, when they carry out their season reviews, have to look at Leicester and think hard about how they did it, especially given the meagre funds the club has at its disposal (Leicester's starting line-up on the opening day of the season represented an investment of less than £16 million; by comparison, last summer Manchester City spent £49m on Raheem Sterling alone). However you look at it, this has been a remarkable season in the Premier League.

It’s not that Leicester have merely benefited from Manchesters United and City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea not being at the races - they have simply been better. With the exception of Tottenham – who have been largely excellent (words I, as a Chelsea fan, struggle to type) – Leicester have outclassed the so-called big-guns: United and City have been beset by their own misfortune – the existing manager in United’s case, the effect of announcing a new one in City’s; Arsenal promised big yet again, and faded by January yet again; Liverpool are still building under Jürgen Klopp, but as Sunday’s Swansea game demonstrated there’s still work to be done there; and Chelsea… Well let’s just look forward to a new season and a new manager, shall we?

Picture: Leicester Mercury

Hopefully they will all conclude that what Leicester have - and they are lacking - is simply the chemistry. And credit for that must go to Ranieri. Look back over the season - the pizza nights for his players, the quiet, dignified man in interviews, none of the histrionics or negativity of his principal rivals. Prior to Leicester, his managerial record wasn’t all bad. He took Sardinian side Cagliari from Italy’s Serie C1 to Serie A in successive seasons, introduced Gianfranco Zola at Napoli, won top flight promotion for Fiorentina plus the the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana, and took Valencia to Champions League qualification for the first time. After a disastrous spell at Atlético (a club in dire financial peril at the time) he joined Chelsea, building the foundations of the team that José Mourinho would eventually win successive Premier League titles with, as well as signing Frank Lampard and promoting John Terry to central defence. Sure, there were some eccentric performances before he was sacked by Roman Abramovich who bought the club in 2003, and at times the label ‘Tinkerman’ was well deserved. But Ranieri guided the club to its most promising seasons in decades, reaching a Champions League semi-final and knocking out Arsenal along the way. And when the ‘dead man walking’ was eventually fired, Chelsea were in second place in the Premier League.

That Ranieri should have returned to England to manage Leicester after journeying through Europe was seen as an opportunity to complete unfinished business. No one, though, not even the most glass-half-full Leicester fan, could have expected that to mean where the team have ended up. Not even Ranieri: "I never expected this when I arrived," he said in a statement last night. "I’m a pragmatic man, I just wanted to win match after match and help my players to improve week after week. Never did I think too much about where it would take us. The players have been fantastic. Their focus, their determination, their spirit has made this possible. Every game they fight for each other and I love to see this in my players. They deserve to be champions." And they do.

In today's papers, on television last night, in radio phone-ins and all over Twitter, the somewhat condescending phrase “against the odds” has been everywhere. Their Premier League title success, as unlikely as it has been, has not simply been a remake of Cool Runnings. Leicester may not have the wealth of the teams below them, but they're not paupers either. But their underdog status has not been about money, anyway. Their victory has been about a team that isn't one of the so-called "elite" winning it.

Ranieri’s side has shown a refreshing passion, unity and discipline that their rivals, save for Spurs, haven’t. They’ve soaked up the pressure. Some might even say they’ve played pure football. In Vardy they’ve had a player who has even given England fans something to think about as we head towards the Euros in France. In Mahrez, we’ve seen someone to create excitement every time he steps on the pedal. And in Wes Morgan, we’ve seen a true captain’s captain. Captain Morgan - yeah. But most of all, we have seen in Claudio Ranieri a dignified manager who, at 64, has finally achieved premium silverware, and on his terms, too.

It is a fairy tale, and why not? Are we so embittered and cynical in football that only an established order must prevail? Of course not. As I’ve written so many times before, football is an archly tribal sport, but it has been a long time – probably going back to Newcastle under Kevin Keegan – that an entire nation has united to will a team to victory. I can’t even remember the last time a team attracted so much interest from the foreign media before. Even the Americans can pronounce "Leicester" properly now. Feelgood story of the year, eh?