Cagliari promoted, Ranieri in tears: “An indescribable joy”

How it all began. Year of grace 1990, Claudio Ranieri becomes a Serie A coach conquering it on the field by guiding Cagliari to promotion to the top division. Thirty-three years later, a lifetime, and what a bench lord life, history repeats itself. At the triple whistle, when he brought Cagliari back to Serie A at the San Nicola by winning the playoff final against Bari, Ranieri burst into tears, melted in the embrace of the Sardinian doctor. Contagious tears, daughters of a story that touches the whole world of football. And of a man of class, the class of a sportsman who in the heart of the celebrations goes under the sector of Cagliari fans who mocked the people of Bari with the “Serie B, Serie B” chorus and called them to applause for the losers.

The words and the ride

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“I want to thank the boys, I’m crying because I hear this match, it’s an indescribable joy,” he said a few seconds after the final whistle, reached on Sky’s microphone. “Everyone has contributed to this promotion, even those who haven’t played.” Ranieri had taken Cagliari before Christmas in 14th place in Serie B, and since then the rossoblù have only lost two games out of 19, winning 9 and ending the season in fifth place. Then the playoff feat with Parma, beaten 3-2 at home by recovering from 0-2 and then defending the 0-0 draw at the Tardini, and this with Bari, violating San Nicola in added time after the 1-1 draw gone.

How many joys

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His tears have even more value remembering that they come from the eyes of a man who led one of football’s most epic tales off the bench, the 2015-16 Premier League victory of the greatest outsider ever in the English league, Leicester. He also won the B in France, at Monaco in 2013, and he had also won it with Fiorentina in 1994. With whom he also lifted the Italian Cup two years later, to which he added the King’s Cup in 1999 with the Valencia, rings of a career that has also seen him leave his mark on the benches of Naples, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Parma, Juventus, Rome, Inter, Monaco, Nantes, Fulham and Sampdoria. Far from being the happy ending for this splendid 71-year-old, the promotion with Cagliari adds another special chapter.