VALENCIA. During the classical period and the Renaissance, every great project bore the signature of its master, of his genius. Back in 1997, from the land where Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci were born, an unknown and smiling coach arrived in Valencia who turned out to bring with him the foundations and plans for the construction of a winning team. In the more than 100-year history of Valencia CF, a new chapter begins with the arrival of Claudio Ranieri: the coach who marked the path to success and who laid the first stone of the most successful era in the recent history of the club.
Born into a family of butchers in Rome, Claudio Ranieri made his debut as a Serie A player with the yellow and red back in 1973. He went through the US Catanzaro and Catania, to end up retiring at Palermo in 1986, the year of the World Cup that brought Diego Armando Maradona to the top.
However, football never left the life of the Roman and, that same summer, he assumed the technical direction of Vigor Lamezia Calcio. He passed through AS Puteolana and in the summer of ’88 he ended up at Cagliari, where Claudio Ranieri is an institution: he promoted the team from series C1 (third category of Italian football) to series A in two years. His achievements caught the attention of a Naples struggling to adjust to Maradona’s recent discharge from what would be his first doping sanction: the positive for cocaine in March 1991.
After his time in Naples, Ranieri arrived at Fiorentina in the summer of 93. They were four magical years for a team viola that, with the coach at the helm, they achieved the long-awaited promotion to Serie A and the achievement of a Cup and an Italian Super Cup thanks to the spectacular contribution of myths such as goalkeeper Francesco Toldo, The teacher Rui Costa or the great Gabriel Batistuta.
The international market was opened and, in September 1997, the sought-after Italian coach landed in Valencia to replace Jorge Valdano, who ended up paying a poor start to the season for those from Mestalla. With Ranieri, the team would set course that year to play the Intertoto the following summer and get their passport to the UEFA Cup.
In his second season in Valencia, the one nicknamed as The Godfather would classify the team for the Champions League and lift the Copa del Rey in that remembered final of the Cartuja, in Seville, land that has seen Valencia be crowned on more than one occasion. In that cup championship, Valencia ruthlessly overwhelmed FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid to lift the first title that broke with 20 long years of drought.
Claudio Ranieri embodied in Valencia an idea of the game that ended up becoming the hallmark of a team, even during the years after he left: above all a compact structure on the pitch, great defensive reliability, solidarity in pressure prevailed. , lines together and a device always ready to launch devastating offensive transitions that Louis Van Gaal’s FC Barcelona suffered particularly. Valencia had the ideal players for this purpose: Cañizares, Carboni, Angloma, Mendieta, Farinós, Angulo, Ilie and, above all, Claudio “the
Louse” López.
“We generated a good football idea and fortunately we have good footballers to make Valencia great”
Claudio Ranieri
The Italian had less luck in his second stage in Valencia, back in 2004. After his bad experience at Atlético de Madrid and his good role at Chelsea, where he led the team to the Champions League semi-finals, he returned to face the challenge of making forget Rafa Benítez. Seconds were never good: the team lifted the European Super Cup in Monaco against Porto, but the season got worse after a good start and Ranieri was sacked in February, with the team eliminated from the Champions League and UEFA Cup.
Two years of hiatus preceded the return of the ex-Valencia player to Italian football: Parma, Juventus, Roma and Inter left their helm in the hands of the Roman. He saved the descent to Parma, led the Old lady on his return to Serie A after his relegation due to the “Calciopoli” case and led Roma, the team of his loves, to a Cup final and a league runner-up.
Later, two good years in Monaco, with a promotion and a Ligue 1 runner-up second only to billionaire PSG, and a poor and short career as Greece coach preceded his arrival in the Premier League in 2015 at the hands of Leicester City. .
It is perhaps the most fascinating story ever told in the world of football. A dream that came true and whose images will be forever engraved in the annals of the history of this sport. The modest and historic Leicester City, who had been promoted to the Premier League in the 2013/2014 season and had managed to maintain the category the following year, kept up with the powerful under the baton of the former Valencian coach and raised, against all odds, the Premier League title on Monday, May 2, 2016.
True to the Ranieri style and seasoned with the talent and deployment of players such as N’Golo Kanté (Chelsea), Riyad Mahrez (Manchester City), Shinji Okazaki (Huesca) and one of the best strikers in the history of English football, Jamie Vardy (still in Leicester), the Foxes they knew how to hold the rhythm of Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester City and Manchester United and finished the Premier in a fantastic rush final to write the golden chapter of its history and turn the world of football upside down.
Despite everything, football never understood logic or past water, and the following season the poor results forced the board to dismiss the coach who had given them so much in February. During the years that followed, Ranieri passed through Nantes, Fulham, and again Rome in periods never longer than a year.
Currently, and at 69 years old, the coach who paved the way for the best Valencia in history has been leading Sampdoria since October 2019. The club that once formed a fearsome team in Italy and Europe has found in philosophy Roman’s a pillar from which to grow and maintain competitiveness in Serie A. Those from Genoa are a team made in Ranieri, built from blockwork and defensive strength, and who has a successful mix of veteran and youth: Fabio Quagliarella and Antonio Candreva, two players who have been World Cup players with Italy, are mirrors for youngsters like the Danish Mikkel Damsgaard , the Czech Jakub Jankto and a Senegalese international born in Arbúcies (Gerona): Keita Baldé.
With a career full of difficult moments and unrepeatable successes, Claudio Ranieri is the living history of Valencia CF. At present, the defensive solidity, and that it has a result, remains faithful to its style in a historic bench of the Football.
Thank you Claudio.
“It was a beautiful experience”
Claudio Ranieri for The Gazeta of Sport
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