Dilly ding: Claudio Ranieri’s top 20 quotes

Matt Stead

From the studio which brought you:

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Heavy metal: Jurgen Norbert Klopp’s top 20 quotes
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We miss you already, Tinkerman/sausageman/crazy man/Scottish man…


20. On his Leicester side: “My team is like an orchestra. To play the symphony correctly I need some of the boom boom boom, but I also need some tweet and sometimes the tweet and boom go well together. Sometimes all you can hear is the boom, sometimes only the tweet. That is not good music.”

19. On his Chelsea squad: “If it is the case that you need just a first 11 and three or four more players, then why did Christopher Columbus sail to India to discover America?”

18. On why Damien Duff wasn’t playing at Chelsea: “Damien is Damien. When I don’t put him in the squad my mother, who’s 84, asks ‘why isn’t Damien playing?’ She kills me about it and that’s true.”

17. On Leicester’s inability to keep a clean sheet in the 2015/16 season: “I told them, if you keep a clean sheet, I’ll buy pizza for everybody. I think they’re waiting for me to offer a hot dog too.”

16. On speaking different languages: “When I talk to the players I speak first of all in English, then I say ‘sorry, now I will speak in Spanish, or Italian. Then on the touchline I speak another language so the other manager doesn’t understand what I am saying!”

15. On winning: “I am happy when our fans are happy, when our players are happy and our chairman is on the moon.”

14. On Leicester: “Why can’t we continue to run, run, run? We are like Forrest Gump. Leicester is Forrest Gump. I give you the headline there.”

13. On counting his chickens: “There is a saying in Italy that you do not sell the bear’s skin until you have shot it.”

12. On Carlton Cole: “Two years ago I watched Carlton (Cole) play for the reserves and I saw two animals in him – one was a rabbit and the other a lion. I want to see that lion come out in him more often.”

11. On Claudio Ranieri: “He’s a crazy man.”

10. On beating Arsenal in the 2004 Champions League quarter-finals: “They showed good stamina and good vitamins and they continued to work hard. I was mad at the end. I was mad with joy.”

9. On who should play him in a movie: “Robert De Niro would be good!”

8. On Mary Poppins: “Football managers are like a parachutist. At times it doesn’t open. Here, it is an umbrella. You understand, Mary Poppins?”

7. On being told a Leicester butcher had created a sausage in his honour: “I pay for pizza, you pay for the sausage. I am the sausageman.”

6. On Damien Duff again, and his mother’s increasing obsession with the Irishman: “My only technical adviser is my mother. When I told her that Damien had injured his shoulder again, she said ‘Oh no!’ Who should replace him? I will call her before the game to ask.”

5. On the Christmas present he bought his Leicester players: “From the beginning when something was wrong I’ve been saying: ‘Dilly-ding, dilly-dong, wake up, wake up!’ So on Christmas Day I bought for all the players and all the staff a little bell. It was just a joke.”

4. On Jamie Vardy: “This is not a footballer. This is a fantastic horse.”

3. On Roman Abramovich: “One beautiful day, a radiant day, Mr Abramovich introduced himself to me and said I should put a shopping list together.”

2. On rumours that Chelsea were considering sacking him in 2004: “I must say thank you to the media because you do a great job now. Before you kill me! That crazy man! I give you a good espresso. A small one. I am Scottish man!”

1. On that game against Monaco: “I can’t change now. I’m like Frank Sinatra – I always do it my way. I told the players everything I did in the Monaco game was wrong. I changed things to win the match – but we lost and I was thinking “Oh f***, Claudio, why, why? Bad Tinkerman!”