Claudio Ranieri

Claudio Ranieri (Italian: [ˈklaudjo raˈnjeːri, -ˈnjɛː-]; born 20 October 1951) is an Italian football executive and former manager and player who is the technical director of the Italy national team and is also the president of Club Italia. As manager of Leicester City, he won the 2015–16 Premier League, a feat regarded as one of the greatest shocks in sporting history.

Ranieri began his managerial career in the lower leagues in Italy during the late 1980s, making his name at Cagliari, whom he took from Serie C1 up to Serie A in successive seasons. He subsequently managed Napoli, with which he qualified for the UEFA Cup, only to be dismissed the following season. In 1993, he joined Fiorentina, and immediately led them to Serie A promotion, also winning the Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa Italiana in 1996, before moving to Spain in 1997 to manage Valencia and then Atlético Madrid. With Valencia, he won a Copa del Rey and an UEFA Intertoto Cup, and helped the club to lay new foundations that led them to qualify for the UEFA Champions League.

In 2000, Ranieri moved to England to become head coach at Chelsea. His four seasons there saw Chelsea improve their points total season on season. After substantial investment in the squad by new owner Roman Abramovich in the summer of 2003, Ranieri led the team to finish runners-up in the 2003–04 Premier League, reaching the Champions League semi-final the same season. He was dismissed by Abramovich that May.

After an unsuccessful second spell back in Spain with Valencia, he returned to management in Italy in 2007, where he encountered mixed success with spells at Parma, Juventus, Roma and Inter Milan. In 2012, he was hired to manage Ligue 1 team Monaco, who had just finished in the middle of Ligue 2, and earned promotion as champions in his first season, then finished as Ligue 1 runners-up in his second season. This was followed by a foray into international management with the Greece national team, but he was dismissed less than four months later after a 1–0 home defeat against the Faroe Islands in the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying.