How Claudio Ranieri’s Roma resurgence is reducing my focus on his successor

I have no idea who Roma’s coach will be next season – and thanks to the man who’s currently on the bench, I’m at peace with that.

Roma fans have been wondering who will manage them in 2025-26 since just the fifth game of 2024-25, when Ivan Jurić took charge on a contract until the end of the season. He didn’t even fulfil it before Claudio Ranieri came back to steady the ship on his own deal until the summer.

And while the uncertainty remains of who will replace Ranieri, the fact that he was chosen as Serie A’s coach of the month for February – and has made Roma the most in-form team in the league in 2025 – makes me want to embrace who’s in the dugout right now, rather than in the future.

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This isn’t going to be an article about the chances of Ranieri staying next season, which he has played down several times. I wrote one of those six years ago, last time he was in caretaker charge. He wasn’t kept on last time, and unless he has a trick up his sleeve now, he will be stepping down in the summer, even though the club might be giving more consideration to keeping him than under the previous regime during his second spell.

Flashbacks to what followed that 12-game reign are encouraging me to focus on the benefits of having Ranieri in charge now. Last time, he was replaced by Paulo Fonseca, who failed to build on the foundations Ranieri had restored. Looking back, Roma did not improve over their next project.

I never bought into the claims that Fonseca wasn’t backed. Players suitable for his system like Chris Smalling, Gianluca Mancini, Jordan Veretout and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were provided to him. I’d actually argue he was backed with more appropriate specific players than José Mourinho was afterwards, even though some bigger names arrived for the latter, so it was disappointing that Roma couldn’t move forward and became stuck as a Europa League team (or worse).

But again, that’s not what this article is to focus on. This is an account of gratitude for Roma having a strong leader at the helm, getting results we would have deemed unimaginable at the club’s lowest points this season. For most of the first half of the season, Roma fans were looking over their shoulders, worrying about how far down the table the team could finish. Now, the momentum Ranieri has restored certainly has those same fans looking up to what position they could gatecrash into.

Where do you believe Roma will finish by the end of the season?

— Giallorossi Yorkshire (@RomaYorkshire) March 4, 2025

When Ranieri took the Roma job for a third time in November, even he probably didn’t envisage being the Serie A coach of the month by February. But his approach has helped Roma climb back into contention and he deserves a lot of credit for how that has been achieved.

Whether it’s been playing players in their natural roles (Angeliño, Paulo Dybala) or playing them at all (Leandro Paredes, Mats Hummels), Ranieri hasn’t overthought anything since inheriting what looked like a dishevelled group.

There are some decisions he’s made that could be questioned – the lack of use of Tommaso Baldanzi being one, for example – but while no one is above scrutiny, Ranieri has been faithfully at Roma’s service and has contributed to a decidedly upwards trend. The good he has done has been weighty.

There are no guarantees his successor will be able to continue that – and it’s partially out of that wariness of the club potentially making a wrong choice next that it should be prudent to simply savour Ranieri’s presence while he remains at the Roma helm.

That’s not to say there aren’t any candidates for the upcoming vacancy that wouldn’t excite me. If the stars align for Carlo Ancelotti to become available, that could be a dream appointment. Alternatively, there could be some younger coaches brimming with fresh ideas whose projects could be fascinating to see unfold. But all that can wait.

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be against keeping Ranieri for another season, if he could be convinced into it – but with a couple of parameters. First, that decision should not be made until the end of the season. Many attribute Roma’s chaotic first half of the season to the sacking of Daniele De Rossi after just four games, but the confirmation he would be staying for 2024-25, before he had fulfilled his caretaker stint last season, was in hindsight equally hasty and inadvertently may have played a part in the instability that followed.

Ranieri is at the opposite end of his career and has nothing to prove, even with a tougher run of fixtures to close out the season coming up, but Roma need to show some composure in the boardroom and make a measured, rational decision to get their next choice right.

In addition, that will mean exploring all possible avenues of other contenders. Yet it could be that interest in the Roma job isn’t as widespread as hoped for, in which case the club could consider coming back to Ranieri – but he deserves more respect than to be treated as a safety net (or, more bluntly, a last resort) again.

Still, the prospect of retaining Ranieri has to have crossed the club’s mind, even in passing – just like they will have to be thinking of a number of candidates who could replace him, which we are reading about day to day and week to week while he sees out his term.

As a journalist, I know full well the importance of reporters providing updates on unsolved topics such as who Roma’s next coach will be. Again, I’m not here to say there shouldn’t be speculation. And likewise, within the club, decision makers should be starting to think about the next coach now; it would be concerning if they weren’t.

But we must also remember that the coaching landscape could look different by the end of the season. People who are in jobs now could become available, or those who are currently without a club could get a job elsewhere. So for those of us with no inside information, let’s not get too hung up in predicting the future.

What we do know is that Ranieri has at least 13 and at most 18 matches left in charge of Roma this season, before presumably bringing the curtains down on an unusually iconic three-chapter reign. He’ll have a say in who steps into his shoes, but he’s been insisting all along that he’s only thinking about his task at hand as a coach right now. That approach has been justified and observers ought to reciprocate it. And thanks to Ranieri’s work in these past few months, Roma have more to play for before the season ends than we might have imagined. There were those of us who wanted it over in October or November; now we’re counting down the days between Roma matches with anticipation. Let’s support Sir Claudio and his players, and worry about the rest later.