The moment the Chelsea versus Tottenham game ended in a welter of kicking, eye-gouging and general disgruntlement, a truth barely hoped for, a dream rarely uttered, became a joyful reality. Leicester City – Leicester City, as the English commentator Jon Champion proclaimed incredulously, were champions of England.
A friend of mine has a saying that there is always in a Premier League season a club that experiences “Altitude Sickness.” They ascend to the top of the table, make the early running, only for reality to collide with glorious expectation, hastening a tumble down the rankings, leaving the “real” stuff to the usual suspects from Manchester and London.
Portsmouth, Norwich, Leeds and Newcastle have sought to upset the four-club power struggle over the years with improbable form for a good portion of the season.
Leicester went unbeaten until Round 7 where they were summarily thrashed 5-2 by Arsenal at the King Power Stadium. Despite the wizardry of the largely unheralded Riyad Mahrez, there were knowing winks and nods. Leicester’s first encounter with one of the “Big 4” had ended brutally and it seemed that Claudio Ranieri and his side of cobbled-together artisans would do well to scrape together the necessary 40 points seen as the safety net in avoiding the dreaded drop.
They didn’t lose again until Boxing Day when Liverpool beat them 1-0 at Anfield, the first time all season the Foxes were held scoreless. They then failed to score in three successive games, although the last of those, a 0-0 draw at Bournemouth on January second, secured their 40th point.
Ah, but this was it – this was the point where the altitude would get too much for the Midlands club who had spent 132 years making up the numbers in various levels of the Football League. They were statistically safe from the drop, as their wonderfully canny and unruffled manager reminded us.
Instead, they had a mid-season re-invention, as a club that almost no-one could score against. After securing only two clean sheets in the first half of the season, they became the kind of defensive wall Donald Trump dreams about in his anti-Mexican ramblings.
I can take all the credit for this as it was at about Christmas that I finally gave up on Kasper Schmeichel as my Fantasy Team goalkeeper. He then proceeded to give an admirable impression of his father, repelling opposition attacks along with one of the most stable back fours in the premiership.
Arsenal didn’t send flowers and chocolates on Valentine’s Day, instead they snatched three points in the fifth minute of injury time at the Emirates in a game seen once again as the end of the fairytale. But within that defeat lay a steel that many missed. Leicester were arguably the better side on that day and even when reduced to ten players with the sending off of Danny Simpson, Arsenal found it hugely difficult to break Leicester down. In defeat, Leicester shone.
They haven’t lost since.
With two matches still to play, Leicester City have re-written the playbook on sporting improbabilities. They have balanced the ledger on the predictability of rich sporting cartel successes in just one glorious season.
Not just football, all sporting competitions around the world could not have failed to tune in to this story. It is a story that would have been rejected by film-makers if submitted as a script. “Change the ending,” they’d have said. “Needs more realism.”
From now on, any unlikely sporting triumph can be coined, “Doing a Leicester.” Newly promoted clubs don’t need to fantasise about a glory-filled run in the league because in legal terms they can now cite a precedent. What odds can you get on Burnley winning the title in 2017? I bet it’s not 5,000/1.
Leicester City have also united the disenfranchised. Those of us with an interest in the EPL but without a stake in the race adopted the Foxes and for once, it has paid off gloriously. They didn’t tumble off the side of the mountain, they ascended the summit, stuck their flag in the top and made believers out of us all.
I’m off to find my boots. Anything’s possible now.
mrrog
Guest
agree entirely, this is 'boys own' stuff, 'roy of the rovers', but of course they could not come from nowhere to achieve it, they had to function within a tiered league set up which inevitably required significant investment so no point talking about that side of it
apaway
Roar Guru
Hmmm, fair enough, but the implication I read from your first post is that Leicester's success is not due to a combined team ethic that managed to outlast vastly more highly rated opponents, but because they're owned by a Billionaire. I take your point about the influx of talent, but (at least till FIFAs fair play policy) the great majority of that talent was quarantined by the big 4-5 clubs. And yes, they're not paupers, I get that, but in the context of the business environment they operate in, they are still very much a minnow in a shark's pool.
EastsFootyFan
Roar Guru
Apaway, If you read my comment again, you'll see that the paltry amount (relatively - most normal people would still kill for that sort of money) Leicester spent on its squad is precisely what I was talking about. We're talking about a competition that draws a VAST amount of talent to it. That fact dictates that the gap between those at the top of the pay pyramid to those below isn't exactly directly in proportion to skill, but rather the result of the interplay of a series of biases and often good luck. The point being that on a long enough time line with that much money and talent flowing around, eventually a squad of players considered also-rans will combine well enough to win the thing. All these teams have access to high class training facilities, teams of coaches, nutritionists and all make at the very least a salary that a brain surgeon would weep over, so it's not like this is the 1970s and there are guys there who need to hold down a day job; they're all pros.
apaway
Roar Guru
"Not trying to be a downer..." Could have fooled me, Daniel. I know Leicester is "owned" by a Billionaire. But can you tell me who their most expensive buy was this season? How about the fact that the COMBINED total price of assembling their squad was less than any one Manchester City player? That Raheem Sterling cost Manchester City 360 times what Riyad Mahrez cost Leicester? Is that the perspective you're looking for? And I don't need a Billionaire to find my boots!
EastsFootyFan
Roar Guru
"I’m off to find my boots. Anything’s possible now." You mean so long as a Billionaire buys your club, right? Look, I agree that Leicester's achievement is a great way, but let's not kid oursevles here - these guys weren't exactly a bunch of amateurs; their annual budget was over 60 million! Sure, the big clubs had 10 times that, but if anything this achievement really just demonstrates that spending squillions on established stars will eventually expose to the prospect of diminishing returns. These clubs aren't trying to build a new spacecraft capable of interstellar travel - they're trying to win a footy comp and so once you've bought been savvy enough to buy undervalued players and put in a good management team, having millions left over is going to make that mountain anything but insurmountable. To me the Leicester experience has really been a lesson in poor human forecasting and the obvious limitations of money after a certain point when dealing with what is on a fundamental level a task whose most expensive overhead is by far the inflated contracts of established names. Not trying to be a downer, but come on guys, let's keep this in perspective.