LONDON — Leicester City’s inspirational manager Claudio Ranieri has picked up another piece of silverware after being elected Manager of the Year by England’s League Managers Association (LMA).
The 64-year-old Italian, who led Leicester to a long-shot Premier League title triumph, becomes only the second non-Briton to win the award after Arsenal’s French manager Arsene Wenger, who was honored in 2002 and 2004.
Ranieri, who was also crowned Premier League Manager of the Year, collected the award at a ceremony in London Monday after a helicopter ride from Leicester’s Premier League victory parade.
“As a player I was not a champion, but I had great heart,” he told the audience. “I told my players I wanted them to play English football and I put my little Italian tactics with their English heart and then we can do something special.
“They followed me. It is a fairytale and I don’t know what has happened. I don’t know, believe me.”
Ranieri was also named Italian Manager of the Year in his homeland last month.
He succeeds Bournemouth’s Eddie Howe, who won last year’s prestigious LMA award after steering Bournemouth to promotion from the Championship for the first time in the club’s history.
“My congratulations go to the LMA manager of the year sponsored by Barclays, Claudio Ranieri, who, in his first year as manager of Leicester City, has achieved the most astonishing of sporting triumphs,” said LMA chairman Howard Wilkinson, the former Leeds United manager.
“He thoroughly deserves all the recognition and praise being bestowed upon him tonight.”
Ranieri was due to fly to Thailand with his squad Tuesday for a post-season trip to the country of the club’s owners, travel retail group King Power.
Earlier, Leicester players celebrated their Premier League title success with a victory parade on an open-top bus through the streets of the Midlands county town in front of about 250,000 ecstatic fans Monday.
The players waved and smiled as they passed the thousands thronging the streets on their way from Jubilee Square in the city center to a special stage erected in Victoria Park where they lapped up the adulation of the adoring Foxes faithful.
Golden Boot little consolation to Kane
Finishing the season as the Premier League’s top scorer has done little to numb Tottenham striker Harry Kane’s pain after Spurs not only lost out to Leicester City in the title race but saw bitter rival Arsenal climb above it on the final day.
Tottenham’s impressive season floundered in the final weeks as it picked up just two points from its final four games, including a 5-1 hammering by relegated Newcastle Sunday that allowed Arsenal to finish above it for the 21st year in a row.
Kane won this season’s Golden Boot with 25 goals, one more than Leicester’s Jamie Vardy and Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero, but the forward said personal glory was overshadowed by his side’s woeful finish.
“It would have been nicer to have won the golden boot on a better day,” Kane, who was named in England’s preliminary squad for Euro 2016 Monday, told British media.
