Brugge vs Leicester: Claudio Ranieri wrote Foxes fairy-tale but 2004 Champions League nightmare lingers

Many managers allow seniority to manifest itself as complacency but not Claudio Ranieri. The Roman has every excuse to do so, too, following Leicester City’s odds-defying ascent to the Premier League title.

The 4-1 humbling at Liverpool on Saturday afternoon, however, posed uncomfortable questions about the champions’ immediate future with their maiden Champions League jaunt now just one sunrise away. Leicester were frail defensively and impotent in attack against Jürgen Klopp’s rampant Reds in front of an Anfield crowd giddy with civic excitement.

Ranieri’s affable nature has charmed the world over since he returned to English football a little over 12 months ago. But there is a peculiar enjoyment to be had in seeing a fairy-tale like Leicester’s unravel into a nightmare.The Foxes appear to be at a crossroads ahead of tomorrow’s clash with Club Brugge, their first-ever tie in European football’s platinum competition.

The Leicester Mercury asked last week whether this clash with the 14-time champions of Belgium is the biggest in the East Midlands club’s history. The glare of the watching world has seldom been so fierce.

Ranieri amused many in pre-season when he again insisted – with a straight face – that he has targeted 40 points this season. While one bad result (two if you include the opening day whimper at Hull City) shouldn’t alter our expectations of Leicester, it nonetheless fuels the existential fear that a year of struggle lies ahead. With Ranieri’s seniority comes a unique experience of occasions such as these.

The former Valencia, Chelsea and Juventus manager has coached in the competition on nine occasions, with six different clubs, but the ghost of his failure with Chelsea in 2004 is yet to be exorcised.

To describe the semi-final first-leg defeat by ten-man Monaco as a debacle would almost be an act of kindness. The Blues had reached the 78th minute on the Mediterranean coast with the score at 1-1 and in the possession of a precious away goal, scored by Hernan Crespo.

Ranieri, though, had a rush of blood and opted to haul both Mario Melchiot and Jesper Grønkjær off for Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink and a youthful Robert Huth. The Chelsea line-up became glaringly imbalanced, with Huth even playing at right-back, allowing Fernando Morientes and Shabani Nonda to run riot. It ended 3-1.

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The west London outfit then laboured to a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge in the return leg and their moment was lost. Porto, managed by one José Mourinho, eventually lifted the trophy in Gelsenkirchen and the Brylcreemed Portuguese swiftly replaced Ranieri the following summer. The Leicester boss, then, has a familiarity with the Champions League but one which he would perhaps prefer to distance himself from.

Each of Valencia, Juventus and Roma suffered early knock-out defeats under his charge in subsequent seasons. Ranieri has been branded as the nearly man of European football, a moniker he cast aside with the heroics of last season. The likes of Kasper Schmeichel, Danny Drinkwater and Jamie Vardy will undoubtedly lean on their manager upon their maiden European adventure for a steady hand when the going gets tough.

Some even question Ranieri’s decision to stay on at the King Power Stadium, signing a new four-year contract with the Premier League champions last month. At 64 and with his lifetime goal achieved after 30 years in management, few would have begrudged him an early retirement to live out his days in San Saba, near the Circus Maximus, closer to his elderly mother. The lure of writing a new chapter in the Leicester City story proved too great. The page turns again tomorrow night.