Arms aloft, a wave, 2,500 buoyant fans singing his name, he turns and he is gone. As Claudio Ranieri strode across the turf at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan no one in that away end, where a defeat had never felt more like victory, would have envisaged that this was Claudio’s last stand. That as planes from Seville shakily touched ground in the chaos of Storm Doris another storm was brewing; a media storm that would follow the news that Ranieri had been sacked.
The decision to end the Ranieri era, a glorious and unprecedented era, was the correct one. As Leicester City fans we have had to become used to our club being global news. Of everyone wanting a piece of the big Leicester pizza pie yet only ever knowing half the recipe.
As the unlikeliest of footballing stories began to unfold in late 2016, football pundits and experts scrambled and bumbled - at a loss to try and explain how this unbelievable team was doing what it was. For once, eyes that had previously been fixed on United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man City were looking the wrong way. It wouldn't last, Vardy and Mahrez would dry up, they hadn't played anyone good yet. Not one of them could accurately summarise the strength of that remarkable team.
Those same eyes have been caught diverted once more. They haven't seen the visible confusion of the players as Shinji Okazaki replaced Robert Huth and our final throw of the dice was to change our right back against Chelsea. They haven't travelled to Stamford Bridge, Anfield and Old Trafford to see us take a pasting because Claudio persisted with a 442 formation which just didn't work without Kante. And they haven't seen the persistence with the likes of Mahrez, Huth and Morgan who just haven't delivered this season whilst the likes of Damarai Gray and Daniel Amartey have sat, in-form, frustrated on the bench.
The success of last season was built, in large part, on an incredible team spirit. Eleven players working together for each other with the whole being greater than the sum of their parts in the season of their lives. It was the kind of spirit that pulled them through on a cold Wednesday night in January at White Hart Lane for a crucial 1-0 win (several of which would follow in the run-in) and in the early part of the season had them dubbed ‘Comeback Kings’ after resurrections against Villa, Southampton and Stoke City.
That spirit has ebbed away. Where players previously clapped good intentions they now point out mistakes. Riyad Mahrez, provider in chief last year, no longer seems to want to pass. The selfless work of Jamie Vardy for the team has been replaced by the kind of conserving energy, pointing and staying in shape that would never have been coached into him at Stocksbridge Park Steels or Halifax.
These are the things that we, the fans that follow this team home and away, see where others don’t. The reality is that Leicester City have been dire for months. No goals in 7 league games, no away win in the league all season and defeats against the likes of Sunderland, Swansea, Burnley and Hull. That’s without mentioning a defeat to 10-man League One side Millwall in the cup.
A big thing I have read is that Claudio should have been given more time, but what was going to change? He’d changed the personnel. He’d tinkered the formation. He’d not recruited in vital positions in the transfer window. He’d tried the carrot and the stick multiple times apiece to no avail.
This was not the Leicester City of their first season in the Premier League who were bottom of the league but competing in matches, scoring goals and running through brick walls for their manager Nigel Pearson. I have rarely seen so many abject performances over a prolonged period of time and questions would have been asked a lot earlier in the season were it not for progress from a poor Champions League group (not one of those teams was better than lower half Premier League quality) and for allowing a somewhat inevitable hangover from the party of our lives. Claudio had been given his time.
The accountability which keeps standards high had to come at some point.
It’s all very well Michael Owen or Jamie Carragher wanting him to see out the season. The ‘Twittersphere’, awash with fans of other clubs who feel it’s their business or their right to judge this decision or to slate our club, seemed to think Ranieri had earned the right to take us to a level lower than that we were at when Claudio first arrived. I assume that those people would be at Bristol City away on a Tuesday night with us in The Championship next season? That they were so entitled to an opinion on the merits of Mark De Vries or Elvis Hammond? That they put money in a bucket to save the club when it was in administration?
For the casual observer, relegation for Leicester would have simply been a shame.
Maybe Claudio’s biggest crime was to be too nice. The outpouring of emotion about his sacking has been akin to the disgust at an elderly grandad being pushed over in the street. He always stirred the emotions Ranieri and there’s no doubting his honour, his dignity and his humility. There is, however, plenty of reason to doubt that the players still felt this warmth towards him with rumours of changed training schedules, bewilderment at team selections and falling out with popular members of backroom staff.
Rightly or wrongly, Claudio had lost some of the players. Those players need to question what they have offered this season and in an ideal world they would be more accountable but you can’t sack 23 players and the way football works the manager should be culpable for poor results. Leicester's results (despite a ‘good defeat’ in Seville where, even then, they were poor for 70 minutes) showed no signs of change and they were in a downward spiral.
Ranieri will be a legend forever. Our most successful manager ever and a man who told us to dream and then delivered something beyond even our wildest dreams. Some of the days of our lives are thanks to Claudio but those days couldn't be a free pass to undo the good work of those who had gone before. He leaves with both his legacy and that of his predecessors intact.
As Andrea Bocelli sang on the pitch prior to our crowning glory against Everton last season, it was time to say goodbye.
