Italian giants let Ranieri go

Italian giants Juventus have sacked their manager, Claudio Ranieri, after a poor run of results saw them make little progress in Serie A. Youth team coach Ciro Ferrara will replace him for the foreseeable future.

Ranieri will be known to most lovers of English football for the stint he spent in charge of Chelsea. It was in West London that he built his reputation as a great tactician and a character that many people found it hard not to fall in love with.

Juventus are fourth in the Italian league, which means the prospect of having to play Champions League qualifiers. The reason that so many teams are dreading the prospect of this is because the rules have been changed to create an open field.

Basically Juventus could get anyone from an established team like Arsenal to a not so established team from elsewhere in Europe. This decision proves the pressure that modern day managers are under in order to go and get high profile results on a consistent basis.

No doubt Ranieri will now have a spell out of the game to regroup all of his energy and passion in order to return better than ever before. There will be a host of clubs chasing his signature and one or two from the Premier League could make an enquiry as he does have the experience of the fast paced English game.

He also has a wealth of experience in European football and showed when his side met Chelsea in the Champions League that despite any gulf between the two sides in terms of quality, he could still work and inspire a team to give anyone a run for their money.

It is a shame he has been given the sack because many people in Italy would probably be the first to admit that he is the exact sort of person you could go for a friendly chat or drink with, without even knowing him. The decision has been made based on purely football reasons only and in a strange way this is a compliment to the Italians character.

Ranieri clearly got on well with the club, there were no rumours flying around for months before hand that he disagreed with the board or the powers at be at the club. All parties concerned just felt that the football was not moving forwards any more and for this reason the manager had to change. He had a good run but could not fulfil the ambitions of the club.

Ranieri will not be the sort of person that would want his next side to meet Juventus in a competition and stuff them out of sight, however satisfying this may be. He would want to meet them and display the gracious character for which he is so admired, proving that they were wrong to let him go and proving that he still has fire inside him to keep him fighting in a game that all so often throws up various injustices. Good luck to him wherever he now goes.