“This is not a friendly”, Ranieri said at his pre-match media conference.
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Mourinho coached Premier League champions Chelsea last summer in this same competition before he was sacked by the club in December after a tumultuous first half of the season.
The Italian rewarded his players for clean sheets by taking them out for pizza during last season.
“Last season we made something which is hard to repeat but I want the maximum”. “Forget what we have achieved; I want more, ‘” he said. And now I want more.
“That’s why I was not so happy in LA because I did not see the same mentality together”. Everybody worked hard, but not as a team, and that is the difference.
“I didn’t get angry with them, but they know”. Wembley will host the curtain-raiser of the season as the Foxes go in search for their first taste of blood for the campaign.
Now we have Leicester and it is not a training session. Barcelona are fantastic champions and can score more goals than anybody. “Some who I know can not play for 90 minutes, but of course we are going to try to win it”.
And he will be looking to an encouraging end to preparations for the new season that have not always been plain sailing.
And Ranieri insists he expects his players to confound the doubters once again. You can’t tell me that “this is my maximum”.
“Both teams want to win it, I am very excited”.
“But it is important that my players believe in the new moment”. He said: “Suffer for your teammates, help your team – that is my philosophy”.
“But after I build something, it has never been destroyed”. But this is Mourinho’s United era we are talking about and it could be a completely different game, despite the Special One’s final fixture in charge of Chelsea ending in defeat against Ranieri’s side.
Key Stat: Jose Mourinho has only won one of his previous four Community Shield matches. Jamie Vardy trained very well on Friday and I’m very pleased. “So we will take it very seriously”.
“I was satisfied”, he said ahead of Sunday’s Community Shield clash with Manchester United.
The shield itself is not as highly prized as the league title or either of the domestic cups, but having never managed at Wembley before, Ranieri is determined to emerge victorious.
“We have six changes, not three, so that gives me the chance to give minutes to some people, players who I know can not have the condition to play 90 (minutes)”.
Will the champions prove their hunger or has the appetite of Ranieri’s players been sated?
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Shakespeare only signed a new deal three months ago and Ranieri has already lost his other assistant Steve Walsh, who joined Everton as their director of football in July.
