“Dilly ding, dilly dong!” Those are the words that inevitably come to mind when the football world thinks of Claudio Ranieri.

The man they call ‘Sir Claudio’ was the toast of the global game when he steered unglamorous Leicester City to a miraculous English Premier League title in 2016, earning a place for himself and the club in football history and later picking up The Best FIFA Men’s Coach award for that same year.

“I’ve decided that leaving now is the right thing to do. My heart is aching but I think it’s for the best.” In a video that tugged the heartstrings of the global football community, Ranieri announced that he was retiring from club coaching.

Claudio Ranieri was visibly emotional after receiving a standing ovation from the crowd, players, and referee before the final match of his managerial career.

After leading Cagliari back up to Serie A and eventually succeeding in keeping them there, he has decided to end his career at the club where it all started for him, bringing things full circle. Only a national-team job would now lure him out of his well-earned retirement.

Elegant, well-mannered, respected and sincere, Ranieri thrilled the fans with his incredible triumph with Leicester, though that achievement was just the icing on the cake in a career studded with domestic and international success and achieved with clubs both big and not so big in Europe’s major championships: Napoli, Fiorentina, Valencia, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Parma, Juventus, Roma, Inter, Monaco, Leicester City, Fulham, Nantes, Sampdoria, Watford and Cagliari.

“There is nothing better for a player than to feel they have the support of the people,” said an emotional Ranieri, who also had a spell as Greece coach, following Cagliari’s defeat to Fiorentina last Thursday. Unconventional and creative, the Italian has a way with words and it was with utterances such as that that he was able to inspire his players and push them to excel themselves.

The Foxes fairy tale
“Why can’t we continue to run, run, run? Leicester City is Forrest Gump!”

The likes of Jamie Vardy, N’Golo Kanté and Riyad Mahrez were no shrimp fishermen but key cogs in a team coached by a man who has always been the epitome of style and manners, despite his humble beginnings.

Nicknamed ‘Er Fettina’ (The Cutlet) at the start of his career on account of the fact his father was a butcher, Ranieri eventually earned sufficient respect around the world to be dubbed ‘Sir Claudio’. In inspiring the Leicester players to believe in their outlandish dreams, he would go on to be named the world’s best coach that year.

And in adapting to change throughout the course of his storied management career, Italy’s footballing knight has never lost sight of his values.

The Tinkerman
Ranieri began his English Premier League career more than 15 years before his crowning triumph with the Foxes. Back in September 2000, Chelsea brought him in to replace Gianluca Vialli, and though his English was virtually non-existent at the time, he would coach the Blues for four years.

It was during his stint at Stamford Bridge that he acquired another nickname, that of ‘Tinkerman’, because of a perceived need for him to experiment and find solutions with whatever he had at his disposal. Ranieri’s greatest attribute as a coach, however, was his humanity, something that simply cannot be conveyed on a whiteboard.

His time with the London club ended after he had taken them to a UEFA Champions League semi-final and second place in the league, Chelsea’s highest finish in 49 years. It left him, however, with the tag of an eternal runner-up, one he was finally able to shake off in 2016.

Home comforts
Ranieri has had the honour of coaching some of Italy’s most prestigious clubs, among them Roma, his hometown team. In also having taken charge of Juventus, Inter and Sampdoria, he is the only Italian coach to have contested the country’s four biggest derbies: Rome, Turin, Milan and Genoa.

He is loved by the media and the fans, nowhere more so than at Cagliari, the club he returned to out of gratitude for the chance it had given him in launching his career in 1988. His decision to go back to where it all started moved the fans, and he responded to that adulation with results on the pitch, taking the Sardinian side back into the big time and ensuring they stayed there.

“Cagliari has been my happy island,” said Ranieri in declaring his eternal love for the city. “Good times help you feel new inside and Cagliari has certainly done that for me.”

The feeling has been mutual, Sir Claudio.