Claudio Ranieri leaves Cagliari. After reaching safety, the coach decided to leave with the club. “Mister Ranieri bids farewell to Cagliari: in his two experiences with the Club he always managed to lead the team to the achievement of the final objective. Already the author of two promotions in the past (from C to A) and salvation in the top flight, in the last year and a half he has achieved yet another masterpiece with the victory in the playoffs and this season’s achievement of staying in the top league, Cagliari is and will always be your home, Mister”, the club’s announcement Sardinian.
Ranieri: “A painful decision but it’s right”
“My journey began in 1988, we had three wonderful years with two promotions and one salvation and then I left, and now after this salvation that came at the last second, it’s the right thing to leave now. I had given it three years, but it is right to leave now, reluctantly, because it is a hard and painful decision. I leave after promotion and salvation. I prefer to leave like this, than in another year with things that don’t go well, I don’t want to stain these years that have filled my heart”. Cagliari coach Claudio Ranieri said this in a farewell video on the Sardinian club’s social networks “I didn’t want to come, you know, then I read Gigi Riva’s words and I came back. Now is the right time to leave us, I hope to be remembered as a positive person, who asked for help from the people of Cagliari and the Sardinians, without the Cagliari fans we wouldn’t have made it. They believed in my words, we managed to keep the ship on course thanks to the fans who always supported us and for this I will be eternally grateful to you for a wonderful year and a half. I hope I have been a worthy representative of Cagliari and the whole of Sardinia. Thank you with all my heart. I will hug you warmly in the last match”, Ranieri concluded emotionally.
The promise in the summer of 1988 and the falling in love with Sardinia
“We will rise again, Claudio Ranieri said so.” It was the summer of 1988 when a just thirty-seven-year-old Roman coach arrived in Sardinia to take up a heavy legacy: leading Cagliari, the team of an island, a noble but decayed club, which had slipped into Serie C and found itself on the threshold of bankruptcy. It was an intuition of the then president Tonino Orrù and the sporting director of the time, Carmine Longo, who saw in him the right man to plan the recovery. So young, but at the same time mature , spoke with the confidence of a veteran: as captain of his teams he had already been a coach on the pitch, under the guidance of coaches such as Gianni Di Marzio and Carlo Mazzone. His determination, charisma, his polite ways, always available the ready joke, a good word for everyone: his professional and human qualities immediately struck a chord with the environment. The Sardinians immediately fell in love with him, he fell in love with the Island”, continues the note from Cagliari.
Goodbye in 1991
“We will rise again”, said the Coach to the team, a tom-tom that soon spread among the fans. It was the beginning of a cycle of successes: immediately two consecutive promotions, from C to B and then from B to A. Something succeeded a few times in the history of Italian football. The 1990-91 season, with Cagliari back in the top flight, started badly: the team struggled and finished the first leg in penultimate place. From there, another feat: the group in the return round he grinded out the game and the points, even saving himself a day early. The paths of the Mister and Cagliari diverge there, but with the promise of meeting again one day, Claudio Ranieri embarks on a journey as a coach that leads him to sit on the benches of the most important clubs in Europe, to string together successes. Without, however, ever losing sight of “his” Cagliari. So when he won the 2015-16 Premier League with outsider Leicester, performing an authentic sporting “miracle”, the His thoughts immediately turn red and blue: “Leicester gave me much of the world fame that I have now, but my dream as a manager remains Cagliari, that’s where all this started.”
The return
“Here is that promise, those paths that have walked in parallel for years are destined to meet again. It’s the 2022/23 season: Cagliari is in difficulty again, entangled in the quicksand of Serie B. As it was for Tonino Orrù years before, today the intuition comes from the president Tommaso Giulini, with the sporting director Nereo Bonato: Claudio Ranieri is the leader to lead the recovery. It is not, however, that simple: “I was afraid of dirtying that beautiful memory”, the Coach will later confide his helper Gigi Riva: “Claudio is one of us, I would be very happy if he came back”, the words of the Legend to definitively break the hesitation. A new beginning, a new adventure in the rossoblù “Give me time”, the Coach begins immediately. but above all he says to the fans: “Always blow after us, we won’t make it alone.” It’s a crescendo: from January 2023 a ride begins that leads Cagliari to conquer position after position in the standings up to 60 points which are worth fifth place and play-offs. The rossoblù beat Venezia at home, won the double match against Parma and in the second leg final in Bari they won Serie A”, explained the club.
“A piece has been laid, Cagliari is once again where it deserves to be. But now the top flight must be defended. Like 31 years ago, in Mister Ranieri’s first season in Serie A with Cagliari, the team struggled at the start, does not find continuity of results: but at the helm there is a confident guide who knows well how to bring the boat to port, overcoming the “heavy blows”. In the meantime the fans never stop “blowing” and everyone – Club, team, staff , environment – they always row in the same direction. When on 22 January 2024 the world stops and the whole great Cagliari family, astonished, mourns the passing of their Hero, the promise is to do everything to achieve salvation”, continues Cagliari. .
“The team changes pace in mid-February, responsible for a series of prestigious results and victories – such as the one against Atalanta and the draws against Inter and Juventus – which distance them from the hottest areas of the table. Salvation is there, within reach out of hand, but we have to take it. Cagliari flies to Reggio Emilia to play against Sassuolo, it’s the match that is worth a season, the decisive one, not to be missed. “Shortly before starting the match I repeated to the team what I already said in the changing rooms in Bari, when our Gigi Riva called me on the phone: “Remind the boys that there is an entire island behind them”. In Reggio Emilia there are four thousand of them, filling a Curva that is overflowing with rossoblù passion all the Sardinians are at the heart of the Mapei Stadium. Prati scores, with time running out Lapadula doubles and Mister Ranieri is carried in triumph by the team under the Curva and celebrates with the fans together with president Giulini. Cagliari is still in Serie A, that promise has also been kept: salvation is for Gigi.”
“It is thus the closing of a circle. The stay in Serie A, exactly like 31 years earlier, arrived on May 19th, again in Emilia, a day early. The feeling is that of experiencing a film, one of those worthy of an Oscar , which win you over with their perfect screenplay: one of those that makes you laugh, but also knows how to excite and move you. They are tears of joy and gratitude towards those who were able to write some of the most beautiful pages in the history of Cagliari: because what has been done will remain indelible in the hearts of every fan”, concludes Cagliari.
