What is modern football if not a roller-coaster? We analyse why it is so for the football managers, and whether it’s fair for them to take all the blame.
Vincerà! Vincerò! The spine-tingling rendition of Nessun Dorma rung around the King Power Stadium. Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli in a Leicester shirt standing on the stage, serenading the club and its supporters in spectacular fashion and the entire footballing world hooked to their television screens. Standing next to Bocelli was a man dressed in a smart suit, chest filled with pride and eyes welling up with the emotions of a long-drawn, hard-fought and unpredictably wonderful season.
Claudio Ranieri. A man who overachieved with a team of largely ageing and in some ways players unwanted at other clubs to win a Premiership title and script the most beautiful story in the history of English, if not world football. Winning the Premier League is no easy feat, but to do it with a team like Leicester is all the more commendable and it is unlikely that it will be repeated. To see him sacked earlier this season is disheartening and symptomatic of a broader problem within modern football. Modern football has transformed into a heartless (in some cases, thoughtless) managerial rollercoaster that continues to chug on and leave its caretakers in a perpetual job-hunt.