Despite trying not to keep too much close company in football, even Walter Mazzarri has been taken in by the wit and charm of now friend Claudio Ranieri, the Watford boss has admitted.

A "footballing miracle" was performed at Leicester City by Ranieri and his players, Mazzarri believes, ahead of the two facing one another for the first time in England as the Foxes visit Vicarage Road on Saturday.

The Hornets head coach was victorious the last time the two met, when his Napoli side beat Ranieri's Inter 1-0 in Naples, and both have, having spent much of their respective careers in Italy - or almost all in Mazzarri's case - become unsurprisingly familiar.

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But their close friendship is not required to explain why Leicester have struggled relatively since the beginning of the new campaign, picking up only a single point in their five games on the road, and shipping 14 goals in the process – the worst in the league on both counts.

Mazzarri said: “I call them a football miracle; it’s very difficult to repeat. Of course, Claudio knows this as well.

“It’s very difficult for Leicester with them playing in the Champions League, with the same team, to perform in the same way as they did last year.

“Maybe there would have been an advantage to have played them in the Champions League. We will find a team angry on the pitch because they will not be happy about their last result [a 2-1 home defeat to West Brom].

“Claudio a person I consider a friend and I respect him very much. Aside from being a great manager, he is a great person.

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“Me as a manager, I’m not the kind to have very in-depth relationships with the other managers, we just talk professionally. But with Ranieri, it has always been closer than others.”

But he stopped short of saying he had, as other managers have admitted, using Leicester as an example for how Watford can achieve their own success.

He said: “I’m a person who doesn’t dream too much, but if I think to myself about an objective, I try to tell my players that we have to reach that objective and we have to find a way to reach it.

"If we continue to think like this and know our objectives are reachable, we will grow not only as a team but as a club as well.”