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Mourinho v Ranieri
- Updated: September 22, 2016
Manchester United’s clash with Leicester City on Saturday pits Jose Mourinho against Claudio Ranieri once more. It’s a meeting of two very different characters and a rivalry that’s turned on its head in the past year, writes Adam Bate…
Nobody would have been particularly surprised if they’d been told in August of last year that the champions would be walking out at Stamford Bridge on the final day of that season.
With Leicester the opponents, such a scenario would have been expected to cast Claudio Ranieri in the harmless bystander role for which Jose Mourinho presumably felt the affable Italian was ideally suited. Warm applause. Fond memories. Just give Jose the medal.
As everyone knows, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Not only was Mourinho long gone from Chelsea by the time all four corners of the Bridge had showered Ranieri with acclaim for this most extraordinary of triumphs, but he’d been seen off from his job in the earlier fixture between the sides five months earlier.
Mourinho’s season was already in tatters, but seldom had his struggling side been made to look quite as pedestrian as they were that December night at the King Power Stadium. Jamie Vardy scored the first before Riyad Mahrez outwitted Cesar Azpilicueta for a second.
Ranieri resisted any urge to gloat. There was no need. Mourinho was gone by Thursday. The man who defines himself by his victories, vanquished by someone he’d styled as a loser.
“I am not like Mourinho. I don’t have to win things to be sure of myself,” Ranieri had said when challenged over his record back in 2008. Mourinho’s response was typically barbed.
“I …
