He was mentioned a vfew weeks ago but soccercentral.ie has just run a piece saying FAI are to meet him on Thursday in England.
I always liked Ranieri. Pleasant, honest character who played good football and who got a lot out of Duff and other young players. Inconsisent in the league, largely because he felt compelled to chop & change his side from week to week to keep a large squad happy. Built a good Valencia side but was spectacularly unsuccessful when he took over again.
Tendency to make unusual tactical changes, so well suited as Irish manager!
He was on Sky Sports' Sunday am show with Chris Kamara & Rob McCaffrey recently. One of the things he said was why is not deemed suitable in Britain to make atactical change within a game, even if it's only for 10 minutes, to try & get an edge on the opposition? Sadly, the answer is probably beacuse many British based players aren't tactically intelligent enough to understand him. He's right in principle but some of his chnages in the CL semi-final 2 years ago cost Chelsea the game (well, as well as Desailly).
On balance I think he'd be good for us though. A lot better than the names being discussed here recently (Venables, Stan, Keane), with the exception of O'Neill & Hiddink in my opinion. He's a lot more experienced in senior football than Kerr was.
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