'I Was So Proud' - Ranieri's Title Memories

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'I Was So Proud' - Ranieri's Title Memories

Our Premier League title-winning Manager, Claudio Ranieri, still beams with pride at the mere thought of guiding us to Premier League glory 10 years ago this month.

2026-05-27T09:00+01:00

by Sam Stevens

Published

27 May, 2026

'I Was So Proud' - Ranieri's Title Memories

Our Premier League title-winning Manager, Claudio Ranieri, still beams with pride at the mere thought of guiding us to Premier League glory 10 years ago this month.

Sam Stevens

2026-05-27T09:00+01:00

'I Was So Proud' - Ranieri's Title Memories

Our Premier League title-winning Manager, Claudio Ranieri, still beams with pride at the mere thought of guiding us to Premier League glory 10 years ago this month.

Sam Stevens

2026-05-27T09:00+01:00

'I Was So Proud' - Ranieri's Title Memories

Our Premier League title-winning Manager, Claudio Ranieri, still beams with pride at the mere thought of guiding us to Premier League glory 10 years ago this month.

Sam Stevens

2026-05-27T09:00+01:00

'I Was So Proud' - Ranieri's Title Memories

Our Premier League title-winning Manager, Claudio Ranieri, still beams with pride at the mere thought of guiding us to Premier League glory 10 years ago this month.

Sam Stevens

2026-05-27T09:00+01:00

For all the mythology that surrounds that unthinkable triumph, there were no declarations of destiny from Claudio, not at the start. No predictions of glory. It was a different time, pre-title, on the back on a narrow escape from relegation. History hadn’t been written yet. For Claudio, it was simply a chance to return to English football and guide a club towards safety and perhaps build from there.

“I was so pleased after I was Chelsea manager to come back in the Premier League,” he says, during an interview you can read in full inside Saturday's commemorative souvenir magazine, produced for the 5000/1 Anniversary Match to mark the occasion.

“For me, it’s a really important league. When I learned there was an opportunity to go to Leicester, I said: ‘Yes, okay! I want to coach in the Premier League and I know it’ll be very hard to save the team, but I want to do this’.

“When I came to the pre-season in Austria, I watched them train and I was so, so surprised. I saw there was a good link between the players together, to do something good. It’s difficult to say what I thought we could achieve. The Chairman (Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha) told me: ‘Claudio, it’s very important to be safe at the end of the season’. I said: ‘Okay, we will try, we will work hard to achieve this goal’.”

The fearless Foxes of 15/16 attacked with intent from the outset. Opponents pressed high, expecting mistakes, only to find themselves chasing blue shirts racing into the distance. N’Golo Kanté would win the ball, Danny Drinkwater would release it early, and within seconds, Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy or Shinji Okazaki were tearing ruthlessly into space. Ranieri still smiles at the memory of the comparison he used to describe his side’s devastating style.

“Also Albrighton!” he laughs, keen to highlight another flying Fox. “The other team wanted to press us, but I wanted to go straight away in the other direction! I said to them: ‘When we get the ball, straight away, we go without making so many passes. It’s important to go forward straight away’. It’s for this reason I said they are like the RAF!”

Claudio’s humour became part of the journey. His warmth disarmed opponents and won admirers. Fans adored him, journalists flocked to his press conferences, and players responded to him. Yet beneath the smile and the famous soundbites was a Manager carefully shielding his squad from pressure, keeping them away from the outside noise.

At every stage, he refused to allow expectation to become a burden.

“I think my strength was not putting a lot of pressure on my players,” he says. “After we achieved 40 points, I said: ‘Okay, now we try to go into Europe’. It’s very good to go abroad and play against other teams around Europe. I put another objective, another goal. When 40 points was done, now we go straight away to try and get into Europe.”

And as the pressure intensified, Ranieri found himself delivering one of the most iconic phrases in Premier League history. The context was a 2-2 draw against West Ham United in April 2016. Leicester remained top of the table, but frustration and anxiety were beginning to creep into conversations surrounding the title race.

Ranieri could sense the mood instantly. He had a few days to contemplate his reaction, greeting the media later that week to preview the visit of Swansea City. Having ‘dropped’ two points – although one was a success thanks to Leo Ulloa’s last-minute penalty – we were also going to be without Jamie Vardy due to suspension. Those who had long forecast that our fairy tale bubble would burst were taking notice from afar.

“If I remember I well, I did this after the West Ham match, the 2-2,” he recalls. “Maybe in the press conference, I saw too many journalists sad for the draw. Before the Swansea match, I said: ‘Ey, man! We are in Champions League! Come on, wake up! Dilly ding, dilly dong!’

“I said this for this reason: Yes, we drew, but you can’t win all the matches. We had achieved Champions League, so for this reason, I said to my players: ‘We’ve achieved Champions League. Now, straight away, we try to win the title! Now is the moment, this is the year! It’ll never happen again what we are doing!’”

We all know what happened next, as a win over Swansea City, a point at Manchester United, and then Spurs dropping two at Chelsea confirmed our status as champions. And then, after a week of delighted celebrations across Leicester, the trophy lift. For the visit of Everton, blue and white flags swirled around King Power Stadium. Scarves were held aloft. Tears streamed down faces in every stand. Before kick-off, the unmistakable voice of Andrea Bocelli – a friend of Claudio’s – echoed around the stadium in one of the most emotional scenes English football has ever witnessed.

“It’s strange,” Ranieri says. “I spoke to Andrea very close to Easter. Two or three months before the end of the Premier League, he said: ‘Claudio, you are doing something special there and I want to come there and say something’.

“I passed on my details and our secretaries chose a date for it. Of course, he’s a busy man, he goes around the world, and they chose that match, when we won the title! It was a special moment for everybody. It was amazing, amazing. Everything was amazing. I was so proud, happy, everything. It was crazy, no? It was fantastic to do this for the people.”

When Claudio – visibly bursting with pride – finally lifted the Premier League trophy into the night sky alongside captain Wes Morgan, it felt less like a football moment and more like something cinematic – a scene impossible to script and as unlikely to be repeated. Yet even then, his thoughts were not about himself.

“I had won some titles before, but of course, not the league,” he says. “I was so happy for my players, for the Chairman, for the fans. I was happy for the people, not for me. At the end, I was happy for me, but first of all, it was for the players, the fans, for the people.”

A decade later, Leicester supporters still speak about that season with awe. Children who witnessed it grew up with memories their parents never thought they would experience. And now, as the anniversary match approaches, Ranieri is preparing to step back into the city where he became immortal.

The occasion will be filled with familiar faces, old team-mates, old songs and old stories. But above everything else, it will be a celebration of the connection between a team and its supporters — the relationship that carried Leicester through the impossible.

“For me, it was very important to be close to the fans,” he says. “You can train very hard, you can do everything, but we did this also for the fans. The fans are the sport.

“I can say the story of Leicester is one of the best in the world. David beat Goliath. It’s old memories, fantastic memories, and I’m very happy to come back to the stadium to enjoy this occasion with the fans.

“It will be an emotional day for everybody. Not only for me, but also for the supporters. Of course, it’s important for them to remember what we did. It was fantastic… fantastic.”

Be there for our 5000/1 Anniversary Match, with net proceeds supporting important work within our communities through the VS Foundation with funds raised to benefit Leicester City in the Community and its work across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

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