Ranieri needs to know if Cambiasso will stay or go

Former Argentina midfielder Cambiasso helped Leicester avoid relegation from the lucrative top flight of English football last term but his contract expired last month and he has yet to sign a new deal with the Midlands club.

Italian boss Ranieri, returning to English football for the first time since being sacked as Chelsea manager in 2004, was in charge of Cambiasso at Inter Milan from 2011-2012.

Ranieri, in his first press conference since being appointed by Leicester on a three-year deal last week after the club sacked manager Nigel Pearson, said he wanted Cambiasso to stay with the Foxes.

"I've had a conversation with him. I have spoken to him, I know him from Inter Milan, I coached him there. I said to him 'I need you, everybody loves you in Leicester, please come back'," said Ranieri on Monday.

"He told me he wants to wait and look at all the opportunities offered to him and then he will choose. But we need 'Yes or No' because at the start of the season he is a team leader and if he doesn't come I need another team leader.

"We don't start the season without a player like him."

Leicester, whose owners are the Thai businessmen, father and son Vichai and Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, finished 14th in the Premier League last season after a late surge saw them avoid a relegation that at one point appeared inevitable.

Pearson, 51, took charge at the King Power Stadium for the second time in November 2011 and presided over promotion in the 2013/14 season to the top flight.

However, the closing weeks of the last campaign were also marred by a peculiar tirade by Pearson aimed at a journalist whom he called "an ostrich".

Pearson's son James was one of three Leicester players sacked by the club after they appeared in a sexually-explicit video where they were seen racially abusing a Thai woman during a post-season tour.

Leicester chief executive Susan Whelan refused to elaborate on why Pearson was sacked last month.

"The club is a better place for the contribution that Nigel has made in the past," she said. "However for the pursuit of the long-term objectives and vision for this club of the owners, a change was necessary."