These are ugly times at Leicester City.
The team heads into the weekend with a new manager and barely above the relegation zone in the Premier League, seemingly doing everything they can to eradicate whatever good vibes are left from their inspiring run to the championship just nine months ago.
However, despite all the outrage over the ridiculous sacking of Claudio Ranieri, Leicester’s place in sporting history is secure.
In the years and decades and centuries to come, we will barely remember how it all fell apart so quickly for Ranieri and this team.
Or even care.
“I don’t think it taints his story at all,” AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe said. “He is still the manager that led them to the league and he will always be remembered for that historic achievement and rightly so.”
None of this should be surprising. The Premier League has always been dominated by a small of group of big-spending teams and they have predictably risen back to the top of the table.
If Leicester had somehow remained a title contender this season, it might have taken some of the gloss off their glorious romp to the top as a 5,000-to-1 long shot.
Now, with the team in disarray and ownership dumping the manager who made it all possible, we can truly appreciate what the Foxes accomplished: One of the most improbable triumphs in the history of sports.
“The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever,” Ranieri said in a statement on Friday, singling out the club’s supporters. “No one can ever take away what we together have achieved and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will. It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget.”
What we are seeing at the moment is just another example of the instant-gratification, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world that we live in.
However, let’s face it: This is really nothing new in sport.
Coaches are always the convenient fall guys when things go wrong. Terry Crisp was fired a year after leading the National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames to their first Stanley Cup title in 1989. Tony Dungy was let go in 2002 because he could not get the Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the hump in the National Football League playoffs.
Yes, Ranieri’s firing comes across as particularly cold-hearted, but that is just the way it is when athletes earn tens of millions of dollars and wield wide influence over everything from personnel decisions to who runs the team.
As the losses piled up, Ranieri faced increasing resistance from his players.
The owners, mindful of how many millions they will lose if the Foxes are relegated next season, hit the panic button.
“Am I surprised that things like this can happen? No,” Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said. “Not just in football. There have been a few strange decisions in 16-17. Brexit, Trump and Ranieri.”
No matter what happens the rest of this season, it will not diminish what Ranieri did.
That is what we will remember. Not this.
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