So far, there seem to be two opposing camps when it comes to Leicester City’s decision to sack Premier League title winning manager and all around nice guy Claudio Ranieri, with some settling somewhere in between.
The first camp believes the decision is a “felony,” unfathomable, horrendous, evil. Here is the man who led little Leicester City to the summit of club football, who helped weave a sporting fairy tale known the world round. Despite the team’s struggles this season, sacking him now is an unconscionable act of cruelty.
The second camp doesn’t see what the big deal is. Leicester had won a Premier League trophy only to face a relegation battle a year later. It was Ranieri’s job to ensure the club continued its remarkable run, if not in the Premier League than at least in Europe. He failed to do his job, lost the dressing room, and was sacked. This is football, twas ever thus. We should thank him and move on.
In other words, it’s loyalty and romance vs the bottom line. But neither of these views address the core question: was sacking Ranieri the right decision for the club, not just this season, but the next one and the one after that?
This ‘debate’ reflects our atomized, short-term thinking when it comes to football. Amid all of our outrage, no one has stopped to ask whether LCFC have a replacement lined up yet. Perhaps it’s a case of “that’s a question for later,” but the answer directly relates to the wisdom of Ranieri’s sacking.
There are, for instance, some rare but instructive examples of clubs that caught grief for a ‘cruel’ sacking only to appoint someone demonstrably better. The universal condemnation of Southampton’s decision to fire Nigel Adkins a few years ago comes to mind. Drunk on newly-acquired top flight cash, they went out and picked up some Johnny Foreigner named Mauricio Pochettino.
Of course no one knew then that Saints had done their homework well in advance of Adkins’ departure by doing what most competently run businesses would consider to be basic due diligence: they kept a file on appropriate and realistic candidates that would actually fit in with and improve the team.