September 15 – Tinker Bridge
IN his short spell as manager at pre-Abramovich Chelsea, Gianluca Vialli led the club to five trophies including the FA and League Cups. Naturally, the response of then-chairman Ken Bates to Vialli being Chelsea’s most successful manager in decades was to sack him.
Bates turned to another Italian to replace him and on this day in 2000 Claudio Ranieri signed a three-year contract to become the new boss at Stamford Bridge. The former Fiorentina, Valencia and Atletico Madrid coach went all Cantona-like when he confirmed he had been contacted by Chelsea. “I was flattered by the call,” he said, adding: “If there are roses they will bloom.”
It was not a universally popular appointment; fans were understandably unhappy at Vialli’s sacking and Claudio’s very limited English earned him the nickname ‘Clownio’. Soon though, just like with real clowns, no one was laughing. Despite the inconsistency that had dogged Chelsea under previous managers Vialli and Ruud Gullit, by the end of the 2002/03 season, Ranieri had led the club to a fourth-place finish in the Premiership, and the Champions League place that came with it.
That summer, everything changed when Abramovich bought the club and unleashed his golden cheque book on the football world. Ranieri was like a kid in a sweet shop and spent £120m on Damien Duff, Wayne Bridge, Joe Cole, Scott Parker and Glen Johnson, Argentine pair Juan Sebastian ‘Seba’ Veron and Hernán Crespo, Frenchman Claude Makélélé and Romanian star Adrian Mutu.
Despite having spending power the envy of his fellow managers, Ranieri’s job looked to be under threat from early on, with Abramovich spotted meeting Sven-Goran Eriksson just days after his takeover of the club.
Ranieri himself thinks the man Abramovich hired to run his new club had more to do with his sacking after just one season under the Russian’s ownership in which they finished second in the Premiership behind Arsenal’s invincibles.
He said: “When Kenyon came, I was frozen. Kenyon was the new boss, and new bosses tend to want to bring in their own people and I was not one of his people. Am I bitter? Yes. Bitterness, rancour, hurt – call it what you like. Before Abramovich came, I was doing my job, I carried on doing it for him and I wanted to continue doing it. At the end, after the game against Leeds, I knew the players and the supporters were with me, even if the club was not. They knew I had left my legacy with them.”
Ranieri was a dead man walking for much of the season and he was finally put out of his misery in the summer of 2004 when Jose Mourinho was brought in.
After a short spell back at Valencia, Ranieri saved Parma from relegation, before taking his current job as Juventus boss. At the end of last season the Tinkerman said he would relish a European tie at his old club.
He said: “Yes, I would love to play Chelsea in the Champions League next year. To bring Juventus to the Bridge, not out of revenge or spite, but just to show the fans and players, and the club, that this is what I do now. That this is Juventus, these are the players I’m proud to work with now, and this is the team I’ve built – on a budget.”
The Tinkerman may well get his wish, but until then, see here for last year’s entry, and come back tomorrow for more from us.
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