Thursday 23 July 2015 12:10, UK
Why Esteban Cambiasso’s decision to leave Leicester is a big blow for Claudio Ranieri.
The board went up and the number was 19. With Inter 2-0 down at home to Catania in March 2012, the San Siro crowd were frustrated and directed their jeers at their departing midfielder Esteban Cambiasso. Claudio Ranieri’s side did manage to scramble a point to avoid a sixth defeat in a row but Cambiasso is unlikely to have fond memories of that day.
He sat on the bench in tears. “An emotional reaction due to the great love I have for my profession,” according to Cambiasso. It didn’t save him from the axe. “You’d have to ask the coach whether it was the right decision to replace someone who has won so much,” said Inter skipper Javier Zanetti. “If Ranieri makes his choices, there must be a reason.”
You’d have to ask the coach whether it was the right decision to replace someone who has won so much. If Ranieri makes his choices, there must be a reason.
Inter gave up trying to figure out Ranieri’s decision-making process just weeks later. The veteran coach was replaced with Inter in eighth place - eventually finishing sixth, their lowest league finish in 13 years coming just two years after being champions of Europe. Now Ranieri finds himself at Leicester just as the wildly popular Cambiasso elects to move on.
Fans of the Foxes might have hoped the old connection would be enough to keep the Argentine midfielder at the King Power stadium. But if that relationship was any kind of factor in Ranieri’s appointment, the theory has been swiftly undermined. The pair never even got to share another training session.
Ranieri is an easy-going figure, very different in demeanour to predecessor Nigel Pearson, but there is a difference between not making enemies and forging bonds. His appeal to Cambiasso fell on deaf ears. “I said to him: 'I need you. Everybody loves you in Leicester, please come back’.” But there is to be no encore.
Sky Italia journalist Valentina Fass believes Cambiasso’s motivation was simple. “He didn’t have a bad relationship with Ranieri,” she told Sky Sports. “He just had other offers. From what I understand, the only thing he cares about is playing. If a manager lets him play plenty of games then he’s happy.”
This might hint at the real reason for the decision to move on. From his debut display off the bench in a 1-0 win at Stoke, Cambiasso found most of his success at Leicester in Pearson’s three-man midfield. The Leicester boss dabbled with two in the middle but it was the switch to 3-5-2 that brought a late flurry of points and Premier League survival.
“As you get older as a player you have to accept there are certain parts of your game you can’t do as well as when you were younger,” said Pearson. “But the flip side of that is with experience you understand the game better.” Perhaps Cambiasso understands that the conditions now need to be favourable in order for him to flourish.
Ranieri might be known as the Tinkerman but he has long favoured the 4-4-2 formation as his template and it’s already had an airing for Leicester this pre-season. He soon abandoned Gian Piero Gasperini’s back-three at Inter and a similar switch might not be the best option for a player who turns 35 next month and needs younger legs around him in the middle.
Leicester have the legs. They might well have lost the brains. Or as Cambiasso himself put it in April: “Players here count on the heart, not the mind.” That’s why Marc Albrighton called him “an orchestrator”, Danny Drinkwater enthused about the way he was “willing to talk to us and help us” and Matty James spoke of his ability to see things before they happen.
It’s a big loss and Ranieri knows it. “If he doesn't come I need a new team leader,” added the Italian and even Cambiasso has acknowledged that necessity. In his farewell note to the Leicester fans, he expressed his desire “to give the club as much time as possible to find an alternative” to lead the team into the new season.
But the fear must be that it doesn’t matter how much time Leicester have to peruse the options available, there simply isn’t another player out there who can replicate his impact on and off the pitch. For Claudio Ranieri, just as against Catania all those years ago, this is an uphill task he will face without Esteban Cambiasso.
