Claudio Ranieri: How the current Leicester City manager dawned the Chelsea era

It was the day that changed the history of Chelsea Football Club: 1 July 2004, the day a club facing possible financial meltdown was bought by a Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, hitherto unheard of in Britain. It was the day too when Claudio Ranieri knew he would not be Chelsea manager for much longer.

Ranieri recalled that moment at the King Power Stadium on Friday as he looked ahead to Chelsea’s visit to the East Midlands to face his high-flying Leicester City side this evening. His first response, he revealed, on hearing of the Abramovich takeover from the club’s then chief executive, Trevor Birch, was to predict “immediately” his own dismissal. “When he told me, ‘Claudio, there is a new owner’, I said, ‘me and you are the first to go home’. You imagine that when a new owner has arrived, he wants to put his man in. It is normal.”

As it turned out, Ranieri, then 52, earned a reprieve when Abramovich was unable to recruit Sven Goran Eriksson. “In July, Abramovich wanted to bring in Sven Goran Eriksson, who was the manager of the national team, and it wasn’t possible for him and he said to me, ‘OK, you’ll start. Who can we buy?’ It was difficult because we were buying in July, August and we were starting the Premier League and Champions League. Only then did we start to buy some players and it was difficult to buy the right players.”

As it was, Ranieri ended that 2003-04 season having led Chelsea to their highest league placing for 49 years and their first Champions League semi-final, which they lost to Monaco. “It was good because we finished second in the league and got to the semi-final of the Champions League and I think it was a positive season.”

Ranieri’s reward was the sack, yet looking back the Italian is proud of the work accomplished during his four years at Stamford Bridge. “When I meet some Chelsea fans, they say, ‘Thank you, you are the first one who started to build a fantastic squad’,” said the 64-year-old, who considers his finest achievement to be the 2002-03 campaign when the club’s growing financial problems meant his only pre-season acquisition was Enrique de Lucas, a free transfer from Espanyol.

Ranieri’s view is that without him steering Chelsea into fourth, thanks to a last-day win over Liverpool, Abramovich might never have arrived. “We made a very good performance in my third year because without signing any players we finished fourth and reached the Champions League and for this Roman Abramovich bought the team.”

Looking back, it seems fair to say that Ranieri – who earned the nickname “The Tinkerman” for his player rotation at Stamford Bridge – set the foundations for the success that followed under Jose Mourinho. It was Ranieri who brought in Frank Lampard – signing him for £11m in 2001 – along with other recruits such as William Gallas, Joe Cole and Eidur Gudjohnsen. It was Ranieri who gave John Terry the captain’s armband for the first time in December 2001, shortly before the defender’s 21st birthday.

And by the time of his dismissal, he had concluded the transfers of Petr Cech and Arjen Robben and laid the groundwork for Didier Drogba’s arrival. “Yes, I chose Petr Cech, I was in Eindhoven to take Robben and I suggested Drogba.” Steve Walsh, now head of recruitment at Leicester, was then scouting for Chelsea and had watched Drogba. Ranieri recommended him to Abramovich. “I work very well with Steve [and] I spoke with the owner about Drogba because he told me, ‘If you stay here what would you want in terms of a striker?’ The season before I had wanted [Samuel] Eto’o but it was not possible to get him from Mallorca because Real Madrid did not want to sell. The second year I said I needed Drogba as a striker but afterwards I was sacked.”

There were no thanks from Mourinho – “nobody needed to tell me thank you” – but Ranieri is “very proud” of his legacy. “I was proud also when I left Valencia and my young players twice reached the final of the Champions League. I can say I wasn’t surprised Chelsea won the league and achieved so many trophies.”

Ranieri has faced his old club only once subsequently, when as Juventus coach he lost a Champions League round-of-16 tie to the Londoners by a 3-2 aggregate score. He and Mourinho, meanwhile, had a fierce rivalry in the 2009-10 season in Italy when Ranieri’s Roma side finished runners-up to the latter’s Internazionale in league and cup – despite taking four points off them in Serie A matches.

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Before the start of this season – when Mourinho, now on considerably better terms with a man he once labelled “a loser” – contacted Ranieri to wish him luck with his new job, nobody would have foreseen that the pair would meet again in December with Leicester 17 points and 13 places better off than Chelsea.

Ranieri is too gracious a character, it seems, to speak ill of anybody and he told an Italian TV reporter on Friday that he had “no wish for revenge” over Chelsea. Of Abramovich’s newfound patience towards his manager, he added: “He knows Jose very well and he knows only Jose in this moment can bring up the team.”

For Ranieri, Monday is rather about seeking the win that would restore his team’s outright lead at the Premier League summit. Leicester, a club who have finished in the top four of English football only three times (in 1928, 1929 and 1963), have as many points and goals as second-placed Manchester City. Yet their Thai owners, the Srivaddhanaprabha family, are not in the same kind of hurry Abramovich was in back in 2003. “It is not similar because at Chelsea it was [a] clear [policy] to buy big-name players,” Ranieri explained. “Now we have to take young, potentially good players and grow up slowly. It is a different way. We have to stay up this season and next season to build a big foundation. At Chelsea there was already a big foundation because there were big players already before Abramovich.” Thanks, in no small part, to his own efforts.