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Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri says the club's shock success cannot yet compare with the achievements of Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest. Leicester beat odds of 5,000-1 to take the title this season, just a year after a late surge saw them avoid relegation to the second tier, prompting suggestions Ranieri's men had achieved the most unlikely feat in sporting history. However, Forest were crowned champions in 1977-78 after having scraped promotion to the top flight a year earlier, and they then won back-to-back European Cups in the two seasons that followed. Ranieri told La Gazzetta dello Sport: "People always try to look for something exceptional in sport but I think that, 30-40 years ago, Nottingham Forest did something even greater than what we have done. "They got promoted from the second division, then they won the First Division title and then won the European Cup twice, so let's just wait a few more years." Leicester can now look to emulate that achievement in Europe with their Premier League title ensuring they will be one of the top seeds in the draw for next season's Champions League group stage. "Life is beautiful and is there to be lived to the full," Ranieri said. "We woke up from this dream to discover it was all true, that we had won a title which was unimaginable at the start of the season. "I want to thank the magnificent players I had this season because they were the ones who made this dream come true for so many people." Former Valencia, Chelsea, Juventus and Roma boss Ranieri says the team spirit was one of the secrets to his side's success. He told the Italian newspaper: "When I met my players, I said to them: 'It's going to take me a bit of time to get to know you because there are so many of you, but you just have to get to know one person -- me. All I ask of you is to give everything you have got for each other.' "For example, did you know that most of the lads don't even live in Leicester? Some live in London, some in Manchester or Birmingham. Yet when they all went to [Jamie] Vardy's house together on the day we won the title, they travelled and stayed in hotels just so that they could be together." Ranieri also thanked his backroom staff for their hard work in preparing the team for every match. "I'm obsessed with video analysis," the 64-year-old said. "Just think that when I was coach of Cagliari, I had two VHS video recorders that I would use to produce a single film. "Well, up there [in Leicester] I found a huge room full of televisions, with people recording every match and every training session with three cameras, and other people looking at players all over the world to satisfy my demands on the transfer market. "Then, before every match, we would download onto the tablet of each player a video of their next opponents with their characteristics. It was a perfect organisation." That all contributed to Leicester lifting the Premier League trophy last Saturday, after Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli had started the celebrations at the King Power Stadium. "If I could have imagined the perfect ending to this story for Leicester, this is precisely the way I would have imagined it, with Bocelli singing 'Vincero' in the middle of the stadium," Ranieri said. "It was he who called me in April to tell me, 'Boss, if you do it, I'm going to come and sing for you.' "When he was here, he came close to me and said, 'I'm feeling enormously emotional.' Imagine this -- his wife revealed to me that it was the first time she had ever seen him happy to get on a plane. I still have goosebumps now." Ranieri took the Leicester job when his reputation was particularly low after a disastrous stint in charge of Greece, and he had talked up his desire to return to England -- or even Scotland -- last July. "I was delighted," he said. "I was so desperate to come back that I would even have accepted a job in the second division. "Two other Premier League clubs had also contacted me, but then they chose somebody else. Leicester convinced me with their management, their plans and their structures. Then I got to know the chairman's family, who I will only mention by his first name because I don't even know how to pronounce his second."
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