THERE is a harder side to Claudio Ranieri, a steel underpinning the avuncular exterior with its easy smile and the twinkling eyes.
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| Claudio Ranieri's Leicester have lost just two league games this term - the least in the top flight |
It manifests itself in flashes of anger which Ranieri himself maintains he does not and cannot hide. "If I am angry you can see I am angry," he says. "I am not an actor and I cannot hide it. It is... you call it, a Latin temper."
The thing is though, since putting his signature on a contract at Leicester City last July that he fully expected to be a season-long relegation battle, nobody has seen it. Not the players, not the staff, not even the policemen who gave him a speeding ticket in October, or the court that dished out the fine last week have been on the end of so much as a frown.
"Sometimes I am angry with myself for not explaining things to my players very well but no I cannot remember this year," he says, sitting in the home dressing room at the King Power Stadium. "When I am happy you can see it in my eyes. My eyes are laughing first always."
Those Italian eyes have been smiling all season and well they might, with Leicester sitting joint top of the Premier League after 21 games - continuing to confound doubters and attract neutrals to their corner.
Ranieri remembers being on holiday in Calabria, Greece last summer, having been out of work since an unhappy and short experience withtheir national team, when he received the call that Leicester were interested.
"Of course I thought I was signing up to a relegation battle," he says. "But they asked me whether I could maintain the Premier League and build a good team. I said I am used to building a good foundation."
And his record doing just that is pretty impressive, barring the odd backward step, stretching back all the way to Cagliari in 1988 and through 11 clubs before taking up the reins at Leicester.
Of all those appointments, his four years at Chelsea between 2000-04 defined him here more than any other - a period which saw him have three years under Ken Bates and the first of the era of another Roman, Abramovich.
During his final year at Chelsea, during which his team finished second and reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, he was mocked by fans and media for his constant tactical changes, earning him that now famous nickname 'The Tinkerman'.
It was marginally more flattering than the other moniker 'Dead Man Walking', after he was stalked throughout by the spectre of the sack to make way for Jose Mourinho.
His dignity throughout a difficult season earned an outpouring of affection from fans up and down the country and prompted a memoir (all profits went to Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital) called 'Proud Man Walking'.
"I wanted to call it 'Tinker Man'," he says laughing again. "But the publishers said no. For me Tinkerman was good. A tinker man finds the right solution. Now I see a lot of managers change a lot and also they are tinker men - but there is only one with the flag. I have that flag and they are second."
As for the man himself, his roots remain in Rome, where he and his wife of 40 plus years Rosanna have their only home. He is a self-confessed Anglophile who has declared his love of cultural outliers as varied as Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals - and Lincolnshire sausages.
"My wife used to come up to antique fairs in Lincolnshire when we were in London and I shopped for sausages in Newark in the marketplace - they're delicious," he says.
And as a butcher's son he should know what he is talking about, even if his love of show tunes, something which has seen him break in to song in interviews in the past, may not carry the same weight in the Leicester dressing room.
Ranieri's career in management might have struggled to hit the bullseye with title wins albeit he has won second tier titles but in his present job with the Foxes hitting the bar again could yet be his greatest achievement. It would be fitting given his constant rotation around Europe since 1988 if it came here.
For all the theatricality, his authority there as manager is unquestioned.
"Slowly we are improving tactically," he says, looking serious. "This team show my character. When I was a player I wasn't a champion but I was a hard worker and I was a fighter. The one thing makes me crazy is if you make a mistake but you slow down," he adds slumping his shoulders.
There have been no signs of that either.
Ranieri laughs when it is put to him that he has not stayed at any one club for a great length of time - his four years at Fiorentina and Chelsea a personal best. "I move a lot of course but in Italy four years in a team is like a Ferguson or Arsene Wenger!
"If you achieve one year there you are 'aaaargh'," he says, shouting loudly and raising his fists in the air. "It is unbelievable what happened."
Something similarly unbelievable is happening here in Leicester. The proud man is still walking, tinkering and, most importantly, has not stopped smiling since he arrived.
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