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In the startling hush of the Premier League break, the Leicester City bandwagon sits, exhausted from all of its tooting and grinding, horns muted and wheels chocked – for the moment at least.
As FA Cup ties and Champions League contests rumble on without them, the Foxes are sprawled out on a beach somewhere – not in Thailand, obviously – readying themselves for a vigorous final furlong.
Although, really, the finish line is only barely in sight; with 12 matches remaining – just under a third of the season – medals are not being preemptively engraved just yet. No, there is still a vast track of daunting thicket through which Claudio Ranieri’s team must thrash, countless sinkholes in which to lose a brand new Nike Hypervenom Phantom II, before they burst, squinting like babes, into that sublime clearing to drink from the oasis of title triumph.
The break has also given us the opportunity to pause and assess what, in fact, a Leicester City title would mean for the Premier League. Leading as they are by two points, the Foxes’ prospects of winning are as real and alive as any of their rivals’, and so it may be useful to remind ourselves of the historical gravitas this hypothetical title would carry.
Were Leicester to win, they would be the first Premier League champions not to finish in the top four the season prior. Leicester have never won the English top flight, and so would be the first maiden winners since Nottingham Forest in 1978. In Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez they have a one-two punch that cost less than 1.5 million pounds, and has contributed 33 goals and 14 assists so far this season, more than Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Edinson Cavani have combined for, as they effortlessly stroll to another Ligue 1 title. The PSG pair cost around 85 million euros, for the record.
With the weight of a quarter-century of history bearing down, a Leicester City title triumph would joyously cast off every Premier League convention we’ve come begrudgingly to accept. As many have noted, with a sort of wistful-yet-disgruntled tone; this is what first division seasons used to be like, before the straitjacket of Murdoch money, financial bottom lines and nefarious oligarchs was applied. Teams would make remarkable, season-long runs from humble places, the league table was far more fluid, and the FA Cup was more important that shirt sales in Asia (we’re looking at you, Manuel Pellegrini).
This is the reason why this Leicester City season is so refreshing; it is an intoxicating cocktail of warm, welcome nostalgia and searing, unexpected immediacy. Another round, thank you barman, on me.
A title tilt built on an apt tactical approach, reinforced by no small amount of luck and timing; even if they finish second, or third, the impact of Leicester’s 15-16 season will reverberate long after the season itself is over. Leicester, at around this point last season, had one more point than Aston Villa do now. Villa will not be leading the league – the Premier League, at least – this time next year, but there will be other desperate teams in the seasons to come that will need an intravenous jolt of inspiration, and will, groping back in time, find themselves feeding off the example Ranieri’s unlikely band have set for us.
But, if we can divorce ourselves from these sentimental projections for a moment, the impartial verdict on this situation isn’t as glowing as all that. This is a gripping, entertaining title race to be sure, but it does reflect poorly on the strength of the English league. The general decline over the last five years of the influence English teams have had in the Champions League is well known, and having one juggernaut team roll to the domestic title is not the solution to this problem.
But even compared to last season, where every English team was eliminated from Europe’s elite competition before the quarter-final stage, this season is weaker. Leicester are seven points off Chelsea’s league total at this time last season, and are two points off then-second-place holders Manchester City’s. But it isn’t just the title contenders that have dwindled; the gap from fifth to 11th at this stage last season was 11 points. This season it’s six points. The fact that only eight points separate 14th from sixth indicates that the top of the league has sagged slightly, bleeding into the mid-table fare. Like a handful of Vaseline flung at a wall – which is art, by the way – the league is now sliding downwards in a wholly unappealing manner. And, as much of a verbal wet blanket it is to say it, it’s this slide that has, in some ways, allowed for this Leicester City title challenge to occur.
But why not crawl back inside the slightly inferior, but nonetheless satiating, Premier League bubble and, for the moment, leave the European nights to Barcelona and Bayern Munich? When you look at the arduousness of all the contenders’ league run-ins, Leicester’s is the least severe by some margin. They lost only narrowly to Arsenal before the hiatus, and will return from their holiday refreshed and refocused. Vardy will continue to run relentlessly and Mahrez will continue to dance devilishly. Ranieri will do what he has done all season, maintaining morale in his own curiously avuncular way.
To hell with what the European footballing aristocracy will say, as they snicker at how pitiful England have allowed plucky little Leicester to do so well. For now, and for the next 12 games, the pen hovers above a fresh page of Premier League history.