Ranieri delivers on Leicester pizza promise

Published 10/26/2015, 9:12 AM EDT

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via Reuters

REUTERS – Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri will deliver on his vow to buy pizza for the squad after they kept their first clean sheet of the season in beating Crystal Palace 1-0 at the weekend.

Jamie Vardy scored for the seventh Premier League game in a row on Saturday, becoming the eighth player to achieve the feat, as fifth-placed Leicester gave Ranieri a belated gift 72 hours after his 64th birthday.

The Italian, appointed in July, cracked open some champagne in honour of the occasion.

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“Champagne and pizza is good,” Ranieri told reporters. “I’m very happy. I’m pleased with our attention and also in the last 10 minutes we showed our character, our fitness, everything.

“I (will) ask them when they want to eat pizza,” he added of the promise he made last month. “It’s carbohydrate, good for the muscles.”

Despite Leicester’s lofty position, Ranieri said his team would not get carried away and that avoiding relegation was still the goal.

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“We must achieve 40 points to be safe,” he added. “Now 21 (more) because that is my philosophy.”

Vardy drew special praise. The England striker has 10 league goals this season, four more than his closest rivals, and turned in another hard-working performance against Palace.

“I tell him every time you play for the team, continue to fight, continue to press, continue to run, continue to attack the line, the defensive line, that’s as important,” said Ranieri.

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“You can score or you can’t score. The performance must be good.”

(Reporting by Simon Jennings in Bengaluru; Editing by Tony Jimenez)

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
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