Claudio Ranieri: The beautiful triumph of quietness in a noisy place

The Leicester manager has done things very differently - particularly in comparison to Jose Mourinho

Ranieri has won the hearts of Leicester's supporters (Getty)

There is choreography and artifice in all managers – even Claudio Ranieri. He’s far more relaxed in England than in Italy, where you’ll find him more serious, sometimes angry, smiling rather less. He also has a tendency to use his own mother, Renata, as a device to deflate pressure, in the way that Harry does with Mrs Sandra Redknapp. The 96-year-old, whom he swept off to lunch in Rome on Monday, was 84 when he declared her to be a Damien Duff fan and a useful tactical influence, during his time managing Chelsea.

But Ranieri’s conformity to modern Premier League games ends there, because what we have witnessed in the last nine months is something exceptionally different: the triumph of quiet in a place where it had become almost entirely unknown. Noise - and the ego to make it - had hitherto become the essential characteristic of Premier League management and an absence of such a perceived weakness.

The ultimate vessel of noise was Jose Mourinho, of course, picking his battles week by week on his way to last season’s title; making the whole world an imagined enemy of Chelsea so that the team could coalesce against such a fiction. Football became conditioned to believe that managerial din and ego were something which no club should be without. Thus, it became the received wisdom that the manager who did not question a decision, request a meeting with the referees’ leader Mike Riley, scream, or tap a wristwatch on a touchline was inherently weak.

It was the afternoon of Sunday February 14, 2016, which showed a different way. Leicester had just played against Arsenal with 10 men for more than half an hour with Danny Simpson dismissed, conceded to Danny Welbeck in the 95th minute and lost 2-1. Ranieiri did not entirely hide dismay over the Simpson dismissal yet his press conference and radio interviews that afternoon were delivered with calm and equanimity. The following day’s headlines were claimed by Welbeck and Tottenham’s proclamations that they could win the title, not Leicester belly-aching. The interior calm allowed Ranieri to think and conceive a strategy. He sent away his players, who had no FA Cup tie the following weekend, for a week off training. They returned to take 19 points out of the next 21.

Claudio Ranieri will not watch Tottenham's match with Chelsea (Getty)

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. This did not seem such incredible wisdom at the time. Yet what we witnessed in the depths of winter was not so very different to the narratives detailed in the book which a few years ago calmly debunked the idea that the best leaders are the extroverts whom all the rest must follow. It was Susan Cain’s wise and best-selling ‘Quiet’, in which she demonstrated how quieter leaders flourish, and most particularly when the group being led is proactive and intelligent. Such as Leicester squad, which was so encouraged by Ranieiri’s predecessor Nigel Pearson to think and have their say.

Of course, the problem with the mighty ego in football is that it creates a managerial need to be perceived as a visionary agent of change. Sticking with your inheritance can’t form part of the story because it might look like a weakness and if success comes early, then your predecessor might claim some of the credit. Well, Nigel Pearson actually should take some of the credit for the Leicester phenomenon. It’s testament to the warped obsession we have with image and PR schmooze that he is currently waiting for a Championship job when he recruited most of the Leicester side who drew at Old Trafford on Sunday. Leicester winning seven of last season’s concluding nine games and finishing 14th matters more than Pearson’s occasional unpleasantness.

Ranieiri – the so-called Tinkerman of Stamford Bridge – was perfectly willing to work with what Pearson bequeathed: going with the flow where required, among a group of footballers who had become empowered to think and speak up. Perhaps that comes with being a 64-year-old.

The adaptations were the necessary ones: throwing out Pearson’s three-man defence and embedding in the side Danny Drinkwater, for whom Pearson had ultimately had no place. The Italian also had the mental space to use the intelligence of Pearson’s backroom team – joint assistant manager Steve Walsh and assistant manager Craig Shakespeare: a supremely important part of what has unfolded. Ranieiri’s lack of interest in dominating the Leicester environment enabled him to avoid the usual managerial routine of showing the last bloke’s assistants the door.

Jose Mourinho with the Premier League trophy (Getty)

To the bitter end on Tuesday, Mourinho made it all about him. “It is with incredible emotion that I live this magic moment in his career," he said of Ranieiri, which didn’t make much sense. Ranieiri was kicked out of Chelsea to make way for the younger man 12 years ago but now he has made his utterances sound like those of yesterday’s man. The quiet man has won through.