It was the day before a Champions League game that I first came face to face with Claudio Ranieri, at a press conference at Chelsea’s Harlington training ground, a surprisingly spartan facility near Heathrow airport. His team were due to face Sparta Prague at Stamford Bridge - their fifth Champions League game of the group stage - knowing a win would see them through to the knockout stages, having already won three of the first four. Still, the manager had a tangible aura of the underdog about him, talking in defensive, finite terms. ‘We have showed good performances and good football, but it’s finished.’ If you hadn’t known you certainly wouldn’t have guessed that Chelsea had taken 32 out of a potential 39 Premiership points up to then, to accompany their progress in Europe. His manner was especially noticeable, as overall the atmosphere was less wired than that which would surround a league game, with his captain Marcel Desailly impassive at Ranieri’s side, reflecting the greater degree of comfort that the team exude in the Champions League.  I was tip-toeing through the usual minefield of questions about who’s fit and who’s not, would the game be difficult, and have you had a row with such-and-such player Claudio (in this case supposedly Desailly, though unsurprisingly no-one has the balls to ask the imposing Frenchman outright). What I was really trying to do was get at the divide between the Premiership Chelsea and Champions League Chelsea. While I’ve never thought for a minute that either coach or club would (at least outwardly) prioritise one over the other, there must be a different sort of approach for either type of game, maybe as much via personnel as application?

‘No. It is no different. It is eleven players against eleven players and we try, we fight,’ says Ranieri, thumping right fist against left palm in that endearingly passionate way that has become so familiar, even caricatured, while his captain gazes out of the window, biting his lip to stifle a titter. ‘We are fighters.’ Thinking back to the successful days under Gullit and Vialli, Chelsea were always sneered at as Fancy Dans, bottlers. Not so now. ‘Ranieri’s greatest achievement, without a doubt, has been making the team more resilient,’ emphasises Danaher. Ranieri talks a lot about his ‘young lions’ and has made a conscious effort to toughen the team by giving it a British spine, making John Terry and Frank Lampard his mainstays, along with Wayne Bridge, an Abramovich-era purchase that looked to be a sure Ranieri choice. ‘The best performance of the season, in the league at least, was beating Leicester at the Walkers’ Stadium (4-0, in January),’ remembers Danaher. ‘The team that started the game had nine players in it that were there the previous season, which says a lot.’ Transfer funds can be a huge advantage (just ask mid-90s period Blackburn Rovers) but Ranieri used a lack of them to foster a spirit of unity that had often been lacking previously. He did his best work for Chelsea in 2002/3, moulding a solid, coherent and durable group when he had no choice but to work with what he had.

We may never know the complete truth of why Chelsea splashed such substantial sums on Verón and Crespo. Dark rumours persisted throughout the season that Abramovich sanctioned the purchase of the two on the advice of Sven-Goran Eriksson – the press discovery of whom visiting Abramovich’s home in October so brutally exposed the transience of Ranieri’s position – who counted them as mainstays at Lazio. In flashes both players showed their potential worth to the Chelsea grand plan, particularly in the 4-0 win at Lazio, and Crespo in particular was bought for those moments, having scored nine Champions League goals for Inter in the previous season. In the Premiership though, with Crespo’s constant injury niggles and Verón showing little sign of negotiating the pace of league games any better than he had at Manchester United before succumbing to injury, their influence was largely peripheral.  

Ranieri is a proud man with a considerable loyalty to his players, but he still deserves to be applauded for carrying on so effectively under such widespread public knowledge of his imminent departure. The quarter-final win at Arsenal was his ultimate vindication, as well as the season’s defining moment. Don’t let anyone kid you that it was that collapse in the semi-final first leg in Monte Carlo – the Italian’s fate was already sealed, as rumours swept the Principality that April day of Roman Abramovich and his right-hand man Kenyon entertaining Porto boss José Mourinho’s representatives on his private yacht on the harbour. It was Wayne Bridge’s late winner at Highbury that was Ranieri’s special moment in a season of toil. It meant many things – Chelsea reaching their first Champions League semi, beating Arsenal for the first time since 1995, and trashing the inferiority complex they suffered against their highly-gifted neighbours. But it also gave Ranieri a respect that he had never before enjoyed in England, from media and fans alike. Sure, people had grown to love him, a sincere man who made comedic light of his awkward grapple with the English language, but nice guys never succeed in the British game, right? Chelsea trumped what is unquestionably England’s best side for many a year in front of a watching continent, with one of his key young English ‘lions’ applying the stylish and dramatic coup de grace. It was such a beautifully eloquent defence of his tenure that it’s little wonder the Italian was on the brink of tears at the final whistle.