Claudio Ranieri being sacked by Leicester City just nine months after winning a historic league title with the club may have seemed unduly harsh. But in fact, Ranieri is joining an illustrious list of managers who have suffered this fate.
Ranieri’s dismissal marks the second straight year the reigning Premier League champions sacked their manager the following season, after Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea imploded last year. Mourinho and the Blues lifted the trophy in May 2015 and parted ways in December of the same year.
Ranieri is not even the first Italian to have been fired soon after a league triumph. Carlo Ancelotti and Roberto Mancini can share Ranieri’s pain, with Ancelotti having been sacked by Chelsea a year after sealing the club’s first Premier League-FA Cup double, and Mancini getting the boot after winning the 2007-08 Serie A title with Inter Milan and the 2011-12 Premier League title with Manchester City.
Real Madrid and Bayern Munich are both quick to cut ties with managers no matter how recent their success. Madrid’s sacking of Vicente del Bosque in 2003 rivals Leicester’s decision to sack Ranieri in terms of harshness, as del Bosque had become the most successful Real Madrid manager in modern history, winning the Champions League twice.
The club announced it would not renew his contract only a day after the 2003 La Liga title, the second of del Bosque’s tenure, had been secured. Madrid also sacked Fabio Capello (twice) and Bernd Schuster within a year of league triumphs.
Bayern are similarly ruthless, and have handed out such treatment three times in recent memory – to Ottmar Hitzfeld, Felix Magath, and Louis van Gaal. Hitzfeld won the Champions League and four league titles between 1998 and 2004, but his sacking in April 2004 came less than a year after securing the 2002-03 Bundesliga title.
Magath was sacked despite winning two straight league and cup doubles, a first in Bundesliga history. He secured the second double in May 2006 and was gone by January 2007.
Louis van Gaal was also sacked months after a double, which he’d achieved in a 2009-10 season which also included a trip to the Champions League final.
Laurent Blanc rounds off the list, winning Ligue 1 three straight years with Paris Saint-Germain but failing to make enough progress in Europe to truly impress PSG’s Qatari owners. Despite securing a domestic treble in 2015-16, Blanc was sacked last summer.
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