Fulham fans can look to Parma's survival miracle for proof of Claudio Ranieri's restorative powers

The Serie A club were in dire straights when Craven Cottage's appointed hero arrived, but finished in mid-table

Before Leicester, there was Parma. For Claudio Ranieri, nothing will ever rival winning the Premier League in 2016, but it’s the new Fulham manager’s “other miracle”, achieved nine years earlier, that has more relevance to his job now.

In February 2007, Parma were second from bottom of Serie A with just 15 points from 22 games. When Stefano Pioli was sacked after a 3-0 defeat to Roma, Ranieri – who had not managed in Italy for a decade and not at all since being sacked by Valencia nearly two years previously – was not at the top of president Tomasso Ghirardi’s list for a replacement.

But it was in a state of mild desperation that Ghirardi called Ranieri (from an airport car park, according to Gabrielle Marcotti’s book on Ranieri ‘Hail Claudio!’), and his Hail Mary pass was thrown. “It was a bit of a shock for everybody, because he’d been out for a long time,” Vince Grella, Parma captain that season, tells The Independent.

Just like now, Ranieri didn’t need to work. But having been out of the game for so long, the fire in his belly was such that he signed his contract with the salary section blank. And at an early press conference, that fire appeared in the form of some uncharacteristic bombast.

“I told the president and I will be telling the players, we are either going to stay up or we will die trying,” he said. “If we go down, there will be no survivors and nobody will be wounded. We will all be dead.” He later apologised for the violent imagery, but it was perhaps an indication of his motivation after two years away.

Ranieri found a big squad with talent, but one that was unable to get results or keep things tight at the back, which sounds familiar. “I've seen Parma a few times recently,” said Ranieri at the time. “They play well, but I want them to be less beautiful and more practical.”

Ranieri arrived with Parma struggling near the foot of Serie A (Getty)

It’s worth noting he said something similar about Fulham last week: “I was here for the first match of the season – Fulham played so well, but lost 2-0. I hope we can play well, but if we play well and lose, it’s a big problem. I hope we play badly and win.”

As Grella recalls, that’s how things turned out. “The team was playing reasonably well [under Pioli], but just not getting the results. When Ranieri got his claws in – I reckon it was about a month – he got us just that little bit more organised, and installed in the players that confidence to be able to win, particularly away from home.”

The first few weeks were fairly grim. His first three games ended in defeat – two to Braga in the Uefa Cup, the other in the league - then came four straight draws, including a madcap 3-3 against Udinese and a 2-2 with Reggina.

In both of those games the point was secured with late Giuseppe Rossi penalties and the young striker, who joined on loan from Manchester United in January, was one of the key factors in their survival. Rossi scored nine times and only two – in a 4-1 beating of Messina – were not key to Parma winning points.

By that stage Parma were flying, winning seven of their last 11 games and eventually finishing 12th. “We were battering teams,” says Grella, who is now an agent for Base Soccer. “I mean really battering them. If we’d played like that from the start, we would have been in Europe, 100%. Everyone was disappointed we didn’t hit those performances earlier.”

With survival comfortably achieved, Ranieri was favourite to take the Manchester City job, recently vacated by Stuart Pearce. Instead, the call from Juventus came, but it is worth briefly considering this sliding doors moment: if he’d gone to City, maybe his path would never have taken him to Leicester, and who knows what would have been different.

Grella was Parma captain during Ranieri's stint at the club (AFP/Getty Images)

The question Fulham fans might be asking is: what did Ranieri change at Parma? There was a tactical tweak, Rossi’s arrival allowing them to play 4-4-2 rather than 4-3-3, but Grella doesn’t think it was the system switch that was key. “It’s his man management skills,” he says. “It’s the way he gets messages across, the way he creates relationships with players. He doesn’t get too close to the players, but just close enough to know he’s on your side.”

All of which will be key at Craven Cottage. He probably finds himself in a slightly better position now than with Parma, because it’s earlier in the season but also because he has a better collection of players to work with. “When I arrived in Parma, all my friends said I was mad, they told me, ’It’s not possible to save this team,’” he said last week. And Fulham? “Everybody said ‘Good choice. Fantastic club. Historical club. You can do it.’”

One of Slavisa Jokanovic’s problems was that he probably had too many new players to work with and didn’t have time to figure out the best combination, but Ranieri is an old hand at this sort of thing. “I am Tinkerman, but I have to tinker clever,” he said.

Painting a picture of Ranieri from the outside is a tricky business: listening to him speak in public and listening to those who have worked with him will give you two very different impressions. In front of the media, he’s the slightly eccentric, avuncular figure who promised to buy his Leicester players a pizza and chased them around the training pitch with a bell.

But behind the scenes, things are a little different. “He can be a prick when he has to be, don’t worry about that,” says Grella. “I’ve seen him do it with some pretty big players. He’s not really bothered about who the player is, it’s just about the message. If he needs to rip a big player, he’ll rip a big player. He can be very, very strong.”

With his new team bottom of the Premier League, he’ll need to be. But Fulham fans can at least take comfort in the knowledge their new manager has been here before.