The Warm-Up: The Claudio Ranieri guide to perfecting a story

No matter what you think of his tinkering and his little glasses and his catchphrases and his Thunderbirds face (cards on the table: The Warm-Up finds him almost impossibly adorable in every respect), you’d be hard-pressed to deny that Claudio Ranieri has a nose for a story.

Think about it. He didn’t just win the Premier League with any old team – Stoke, say, or Southampton – but with one that had been flirting with relegation for much of the previous season. One whose star striker had spent most of his career playing glorified park football. One with Danny Simpson in the starting XI.

Now, to really ram home the magnitude of his achievement, he’s serenely guiding them towards the drop zone once more, dangling them there above the fiery pits like a master yo-yoer. From here on in, it’s a guaranteed win as far as narrative goes: either (1) he keeps them up, which is a good story, (2) they go down, which is a good story, or (3) he gets sacked, which is a good story. It’s genius, really.

And yet there’s more. Because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Leicester ARE ALSO GOING TO WIN THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, thus completing the most head-spinning, inexplicable sequence of events since… well, whatever’s happened in American politics in the last 10 minutes.

The Foxes weren’t very good against Sevilla last night. They were absolutely battered in the first half and could easily have been two or three down at the interval. When Joaquín Correa added to Pablo Sarabia’s opener just after the hour mark, it looked like curtains.

But then Jamie “ooooh, it’s soooo hard to score in the league, isn’t it Claudio, nudge nudge wink wink” Vardy popped up with an away goal that – trust The Warm-Up on this – will definitely put them through to the next round, where they’ll definitely sneak past Juventus. Then they’ll definitely obliterate Bayern Munich, just to wind up Arsenal fans, and beat Manchester City in the final courtesy of a Kasper Schmeichel overhead kick. It’s a sure thing.

At that point, finally content with the denouement of his tale, Ranieri will either retire or spontaneously burst into a supernova of blinding white light where he stands, or both. And that, grazie very much, is how you perfect a story.

Manchester United secured their place in the last 16 of the Europa League, beating Saint-Etienne in what might just have been the dullest game The Warm-Up has seen all year.

You could watch the highlights, but to save you some time, here’s a comprehensive list of things that happened:

– The referee blew for kick-off.

– Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored a goal.

– The referee blew for full-time.

You’re welcome.

To be accurate (it’s a new thing I’m trying; feedback welcome), there were actually a couple more vaguely-noteworthy occurrences in France: both Mkhitaryan and Michael Carrick were taken off after picking up knocks and are doubts for the League Cup final at the weekend.

That’s not the only injury news knocking around this morning, either. Arsenal fans may wish to look away now, for the Daily Mirror report that Santi Cazorla will miss the remainder of the season. Sad news for the loveable Spaniard and a hammer blow to the Gunners’ hopes of their customary bare-minimum fourth-place Premier League finish.

This just in from the something-in-my-eye department: it’s Gigi Buffon and Iker Casillas, swapping shirts and just generally being mates, some 81 years after they first played one another. Bonus points for coming dressed as their favourite citrus fruits, too.

The Warm-Up is not convinced that Simone Zaza is any better at football than your postman, but respect where it’s due: this strike, which set Valencia on the way to a shock win over Real Madrid yesterday, was a bit special.

74 seconds.

No, not the time it takes The Warm-Up to stop crying before getting out of bed every morning, but the interval between Porto left-back Alex Telles’ two yellow cards against Juventus.

It was a masterclass of brainlessness from the Brazilian, who shoulder-barged Juan Cuadrado to ground, got up, jogged around pretending not to be a sociopath for a bit, then got bored and promptly clattered into Stephan Lichtsteiner – not one to underplay contact in such cases – with all the finesse of a combine harvester.

Porto struggled on with 10 men, but late goals from Juve subs Marko Pjaca and Dani Alves gave them a mountain to climb in Turin in three weeks’ time.

Ah, Gary. It was all going so well. Then you managed to fall into one of the modern age’s many massively-consequential bear traps:

Suddenly, everyone with even a passing interest in football and a Twitter account thought he was Louis CK. Look at the state of this idiot:

In the end, football broadcasting’s voice of compassion knocked out a couple of self-mocking follow-up tweets and came out smelling of roses. But The Warm-Up hopes that he finds time have a good, long look at himself in the mirror and reflect on his part in this sordid affair.

It’s Thursday, so naturally the big attraction is the game between Manchest… oh. Luckily there are still 13 other Europa League matches to soften that blow, including Tottenham vs Gent at 8.05pm.

It’s the first of five consecutive home games for Spurs, but probably not as homely as they’d like: they’re back at Wembley for the fourth time this term. Mauricio Pochettino picked a strong side in Belgium, so there’s every chance he’ll give it a proper go.