Ranieri: Hurt but not bitter

‘Memories!” Claudio Ranieri exclaims on his first day back in the city where he was loved so intensely and betrayed so pitilessly. At the entrance to a genteel London hotel restaurant of the same name, a sombre string quartet strikes up a plaintive melody on cue.

‘This is my first lunch in London since I leave Chelsea,” he laughs, ‘and they send us to a place called Memories! They start playing this sad but beautiful music when I walk through the door. What are they telling me?”

Lunch with Ranieri is a sweetly nostalgic and occasionally uproarious affair. And yet, as in any account of a doomed relationship, pain is rarely far from the surface.

‘I am a sensitive man and so I understand why we talk about betrayal even though it is not the word I like. I try to say I am disappointed but not betrayed. I am not bitter — but I will tell you when I was most disappointed. The day before the first leg of the Champions League semifinal against Monaco, I hear that Roman Abramovich and Peter Kenyon are about to meet [Jose] Mourinho’s agent in Monte Carlo. It was a little …”

He rolls a swig of blood-red shiraz around his mouth as he pauses. And then he slams a fist into his chest. It’s easy to imagine the knife going in and wounding him terribly.

‘I knew they wanted Mourinho but the timing was very wrong. In that moment I say to myself, ‘I’m going to try even more to win this game.’ So I go too strong. The emotion takes over. But this is my fault. It is my responsibility.”

In his desire for ‘retaliation”, for ‘proving a point” to Abramovich, the club’s owner, and Kenyon, the chief executive, Ranieri seemed to lose all his tactical composure. When Monaco were reduced to 10 men, he ‘wanted to kill the tie there and then”. Some already dubious selections were exacerbated when, with his choice of substitutes, he left Chelsea vulnerable and exposed. They conceded three goals on a night that still haunts him.

‘Before the second leg at home I also think we can do something fantastic. The guys were very strong. We go 2-0 up and then Monaco score with a handball in the last second of the first half. This is pain! If they start the second half two goals down then they have to attack. The game is completely changed. But that is not how the story worked out.”

He shrugs wryly when asked if even winning the competition could have saved him at Chelsea. Though he is careful to praise Abramovich, because the terms of his huge settlement presumably restrict any criticism of the Russian owner, his fate had been decided nine months earlier.

In his new book, Proud Man Walking, he suggests that, at his first meeting with Abramovich, ‘calmly and with the greatest sincerity, I had presented him with an opening, a perfect assist, to end my contract painlessly. No answer. Instead, he began to ask for my opinions on the team …”

Ranieri is more revealing in person.

‘I did not say this in the book but something happened before that meeting. When Roman arrived for the first time during pre-season I was in Trevor Birch’s office. Suddenly I see four or five men walk past. Trevor says Roman was one of them. I tell Trevor that if Roman doesn’t meet me today then I have no chance. And of course he did not ask to see me. We only met about a week later. I took this as a very clear signal.”

Abramovich, for Ranieri, is ‘very mysterious. He is hard to know but he was very generous to me.” In one of his few talkative moments, Abramovich told Ranieri he had fallen in love with football after watching Real Madrid defeat Manchester United 5-3 in an extraordinary Champions League encounter the previous season.

Out of such naivety, coupled with unlimited money, Abramovich ‘asks simple questions. ‘Who is the best manager in England?’ They tell him [Sven-Goran] Eriksson. He says: ‘I want Eriksson.’ He then asks: ‘Who is the best in marketing?’ Someone says: ‘Peter Kenyon.’ So Roman says: ‘I want Kenyon.’”

Ranieri’s contempt for Kenyon is plain. ‘I think Roman is a strong man. Kenyon is different. He is not a fantastic person.”

The Italian looks at me gravely before, unable to help himself, he twinkles again.

‘Roman never said: ‘Claudio, you must win to survive.’ Kenyon said that as soon as he arrives. He was not speaking for Roman. This was just a reflection of Kenyon. So people say: ‘Who do we like? Ranieri or Kenyon?’ This is great for me. It is no contest. Suddenly everyone is with me. The whole nation is with me. Thank you, Peter Kenyon!”

After Chelsea beat Arsenal in the Champions League quarterfinal, Ranieri and Abramovich hugged in delight.

‘I was happy to share this with Roman. But I could not embrace Kenyon. A handshake is all I give him. I made a point of that. You see, I wanted to finish my job at Chelsea. I start with the foundation and then the first floor and second floor before we reach the roof garden.”

Ranieri might have made it to the second floor at Stamford Bridge but it is ‘the special one”, Mourinho, who now tends to the blue ‘roof garden” with his glinting pruning shears and frugal caution.

Distancing himself from his Portuguese replacement by stressing his overwhelming preference for the footballing philosophy of Arsène Wenger and the raw passion of Sir Alex Ferguson, Ranieri sidesteps comparisons between his tinkering Chelsea and the pragmatic model being shaped by Mourinho.

‘I only see 10 minutes of their first match against Manchester United. I’m living in a hotel in Valencia and they don’t trust me to watch football. I switch on my TV and there is no football. There is golf! There is a Japanese channel! But no football. Unbelievable! I must move out soon.

‘But his story at Porto tells you that Mourinho always has strong defence. My friends who have seen Chelsea this season say it is sometimes painful to watch.”

Asked to imagine what Abramovich might make of the entertainment on offer, with eight goals in eight Premiership games, Ranieri smiles. ‘That’s for Roman to answer …”

Ranieri knows that winning is everything. His new team mirror Chelsea’s current position — Valencia are second and unbeaten in La Liga, only two points adrift of the more flamboyant Barcelona.

‘I think Chelsea and Valencia are two of the favourites for the Champions League. If we both reach the final no one can say they will be surprised.”

Such a final, with victory for Valencia, and defeat less for Chelsea than Abramovich, Kenyon and Mourinho, must surely be an enduring dream for Ranieri?

‘Of course. But I don’t think about it. I did not win the Champions League last season, but something special happened in England. I understood it when we played our last away match — at Manchester United.

”Both at the beginning, when I was walking to the bench, and then again at the end the Manchester fans applaud me with real emotion. This is amazing. How the English people link with me is incredible. It was even more powerful in my last game at Chelsea. I could feel it so strongly.”

Ranieri looks down in wonder. And then, again, he laughs softly in the city he lost.

‘I don’t think Peter Kenyon will ever know that feeling …” —