Leicester City have announced their new manager this evening, following Ruud van Nistelrooy’s summer dismissal. The Foxes were relegated last season under the Manchester United legend and have now snapped up a Championship rival’s head coach as his successor.
The manager in question, is Queen Park Rangers’ Marti Cifuentes. As Leicester’s sixth permanent manager in two years, the Foxes will be hoping the Spaniard can guide the club straight back to the Premier League. With FFP charges and EFL sanction hearings looming large over Leicester, the 43-year-old has his work cut out for him.
The Foxes’ club chairman, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, had this to say about his latest appointment:
“We felt strongly that bringing him to the club would help us create the success we all want in the years ahead.
“A modern, progressive football philosophy… an excellent fit.”
From Survival To Promotion-Pushing
Despite fairly unsuccessful league positions over the past two seasons with Cifuentes at the helm, QPR were transformed upon the Spanish manager’s arrival in the 23/24 season, consequently avoiding the drop to League One. With a 41% win rate in the second division, Cifuentes led the London-based side to an 18th-placed survival.
Last season, the former Hammarby manager took Rangers to 15th place in a fiercely competitive Championship campaign. The Rs will remember Cifuentes as a great servant to the club despite minimal comparative success to their legendary managers.
Now joining Leicester as a promotion-pushing outfit, the 43-year-old will take on his second job in England. QPR took a punt on Cifuentes in October 2023 as they poached him from Hammarby in the Allsvenkan. The new Foxes boss has worked as the head coach for AaB, Sandefjord, CE L’Hospitalet and Sant Andreu.
Writer’s View
Cifuentes was destined for a move higher than QPR for a quite a while. The remarkable job the 43-year-old delivered in his 2023/24 ‘saviour season’ helped to stabilise the club after Gareth Ainsworth’s dismissal. Rangers looked like a side inevitably ready for the drop and the fans should be thankful for his services.
Leicester are getting a motivator and an astute tactician as their new head coach. They are also following Southampton’s ambitious appointment of Will Still and Sheffield United’s of Rubén Sellés. These three are all risks that will likely pay off, seeing younger managers step up to the mantle of Premier League-pushing clubs.
