The Leicester City Story

The music starts; those horns, the strings and that guitar riff.
The gun barrel sequence, thrilling cinema-goers since 1962,
begins. The assassin tracks 007 across the screen in the
familiar manner but the secret agent turns as only he can; he
fires his gun and fresh blood trickles down in front of the
camera lens...
"The name's Vardy. Jamie Vardy."
Unlikely? You bet. But still, according to the bookmakers, it's 10
times more likely that Vardy now moves to Hollywood to
become the new James Bond than it was for Leicester City to
win the Premier League title at the start of the season.
Vardy, freshly crowned the Football Writers' Player of the Year,
is currently available at odds of 500/1 to play the quintessential
British action hero in the new franchise release. Leicester at the
start of the season were 5000/1 to win the Premier League - by
far, the longest odds offered on any winning team or individual
in the history of professional sports.
Do not adjust your reality: this really is happening. For the past
three months Leicester Citys gloriously bold progress towards a
first English top-flight title has unfurled like a slow breaking
wave. A draw against Manchester United on Sunday afternoon
left Claudio Ranieris collection of offcuts and rising talents a
step closer. Tottenhams failure to beat Chelsea on Monday
night was the final nudge. The wave has finally broken on a
Premier League title some are already calling the most unlikely
sporting victory of all time.
The fairytale-ish aspects of this are well rehearsed. At the start
of the season Leicester to win the league, a wager taken up by
only 12 William Hill punters, among them the 39-year-old
Leicester carpenter Leigh Herbert whose fiver, offered up in
faith not hope, has now raked in 25,000. Three months into
the season, with Leicester already haring away at the top of the

table, they were still 1,000-1 to win it. Still a freak, a blip, a
hilarious blue-shirted glitch.
And yet the most striking aspect of the seasons endgame has
been the beautifully controlled way Leicester have closed
things out. It is only in the last few weeks that the realisation
has dawned Leicester havent just been edging this theyve
been running away with it, already out there on the victory lap
of honour, ambling round the bases, high-fiving the bench, ball
safely dispatched above the bleachers.
Things like this, you don't expect to happen in real life. And
when they do, you laud them. You exhalt the participants who
defied not only seemingly insurmountable odds but all sporting
logic. You do something about it so people forever more will
know about it.
Lets say it again; 5000/1. Kim Kardashian is currently available
at 2000/1 to become the next president of the United States.
League seasons don't generally end with a bang and that
sometimes serves to deaden the sensation of incoming title
winners. It's not a criticism to say that a league campaign lacks
something of the buzzer-beating drama of play-offs or cup
finals, merely an observation. Sergio Aguero's injury time goal
against Queens Park Rangers in 2012 to win the title for
Manchester City is as dramatic as it could possibly get.
The bald facts of the Leicester Supremacy are brilliantly stark.
This is a club whose previous highest league position was a
runners-up spot in 1929, who have been relegated or promoted
22 times in all. Too small to stay up, too big to stay down,
Leicester are instead the ultimate ballcock team, clunking up
and down between the divisions with reassuring regularity, an
in-betweener club in a city on the way to somewhere else.
In 2002 they nearly went out of business altogether but were
rescued by a consortium led in part by their ex-player Gary
Lineker, soon to present Match of the Day dressed in only his
oversized Y-fronts, part of a sightly unnecessary early-season

title bet. Two seasons ago they were fighting their way up out of
the second tier. In February last year they were bottom of the
Premier League and on their way down before a stunning late
rally under Nigel Pearson, who was abruptly sacked. And now
Outside an isolated croft in deepest Yorkshire, Nigel Pearson
stands up from his kindling wood, folds his arms, & stares hard
at the moon. He built the foundation. He laid the groundwork.
And now from nowhere we have this, a season that has quite
literally morphed into a Hollywood script. Indeed a Jamie Vardy
movie is already in pre production, based on the life and times
of Leicesters improbable top scorer, a late-blooming, whippetthin, scaldingly quick journeyman striker.
Really, though, it is Leicesters own story, the league title that
wasnt supposed to be, that will be forcing the script-editors to
rewrite. There have been surprising champions before. In the
past 55 years Nottingham Forest and Ipswich Town have won
the title the season after being promoted. Brian Clough was the
manager of Nottingham Forest from 1975-1993. Charismatic,
outspoken and often controversial, Clough is considered one of
the great managers of the English game. When Brian Clough
took over Nottingham Forest in 1975, he arrived at an
unfashionable, unremarkable mid-table team in the second
flight of English football, as he looked to rebuild his reputation
after a well-documented 44-day stint at Leeds United. That was
then, though.
Within four years Forest were champions of Europe, and Old Big
'Ead had completed one of the most remarkable managerial
achievements in football history.
In the violently stratified air of modern-day Big Football, a
triumph like this seemed not just remote but impossible. The
website Sporting Intelligence has calculated Manchester United
have spent more on new players in the two-year reign of their
current manager than the new champions have in their entire
132-year existence. There is no back route to the summit. The
world has shifted. Some things simply cant happen any more.
This has. How?

The easiest way into the Leicester story is probably through the
players themselves, a band of outsiders and left-field punts
whose success seems to provide its own lesson in redemptive
second chances. Overseeing this beachcombers XI is a
manager best known before now for coming second. It is hard
not to love Claudio Ranieri- the tinkerman, the brilliantly shrewd
and funny Italian uncle you never had, and a manager who is
often seen out and about in Leicester, eating in local
restaurants, having a drink with fans, posing for endless
patiently beaming selfies.
Ranieris genius has been to see what hes got, take a deep,
fortifying sniff of that burgeoning team spirit and simply let it
keep on ticking, tightening up the details on the hoof as the
season has thrummed along. It should be said Leicester are not
all unicorns and stardust. This is a tough, gnarly team that can
hustle and grapple and work between the lines of the laws.
When Ranieri took over from Pearson in the summer his
appointment was widely mocked. Ranieri mentioned only a few
weeks ago that he was aware he had been installed as the
favourite to be the first Premier League manager to be sacked
yet, in keeping with his image, the Italian never returned fire on
his critics.
Instead, he quietly went about the job of transforming Leicester
into title challengers, only admitting that they were in the race
four matches before the end of the season. He changed their
targets step by step, from getting to 40 points, qualifying for
Europe and securing their place in the Champions League
group stage, and now the final box doing the unthinkable and
winning the league has been ticked off. It is a narrative that
belongs to a different era Nottingham Forest, in 1978, were
the last first-time winners and means that Ranieri, at the age
of 64, has finally won a major league. He finished second in the
Premier League with Chelsea in 2004 and was twice a runnerup in Serie A, and once in Ligue 1. Bridesmaid Ranieri is finally
the Bride.
There are 38 matches - that's a long old slog - and as such
there is usually plenty of time to become accustomed to one
team or another being crowned the league champions. Most

people felt when Tottenham Hotspur failed to beat West

Bromwich Albion last Monday night that the Fat Lady sang.
The 1-1 draw at White Hart Lane left Leicester seven points
clear with only nine to play for. Throw in the fact that Spurs had
to go to Chelsea and win - a result beyond their capabilities
since 1990 - and Leicester's title win felt as close to inevitable
as could be.
Down the final stretch, teams have come unstuck before. "The
choke". Most famously, Newcastle botched their title bid in
1996 when it appeared to all and sundry they would win it.
Leicester went top on matchday 23 and every week since they
were expected to falter. But they haven't looked back. There
was a wobble over Christmas and the New Year. Now they'll go
back to where they belong, it was reasoned. The natural order
would be restored. Well, it was, but to a contrary extent. They
re-emerged from their slump to win away at Spurs. Oh, what a
vital win that looks like now.
We have had the chance, then, to grow used to the once
implausible idea of Leicester City becoming champions. Their
title chances moved through all stages from impossible to
unlikely, from improbable to inevitable.
Claudio Ranieri remarked earlier in the season that 40 points
and survival was the objective. How many league-winning
managers have had to say that? There's keeping expectations
in check and there's presiding over the greatest sporting
outsider story of all time.
So, let's take a minute to appreciate what we are seeing. Here
we are after 36 matches of the 2015-16 English Premier League
season congratulating Leicester City for winning the title. It is
the richest prize in football contested by some of the highest-

paying sports teams on the planet. It is a closed shop won by

only five different teams since 1992. Only one of those could be
classed as an outsider - Blackburn Rovers in 1995.
For the most part, it's been a case of let the richest team win.
Not now. Of course, the stars aligned for Leicester in the sense
that the big teams couldn't summon the consistency or the
courage to do it this year. That takes nothing away from
Leicester's unique achievements.
Let's recap.
Leicester City were only promoted in 2014 and still feature
many of the same players who came up from the
Championship. Wes Morgan, Riyad Mahrez and Vardy are just
three; all were voted into the PFA Premier League team of the
season. Mahrez, meanwhile, is the players' Player of the Year
while Vardy, of course, took the Writers' award.
Leicester City, who miraculously escaped relegation last term
having won seven of the last nine matches, are now
champions. Leicester City, who as recently as 2009 were in the
third tier, are kings of all 92 English league clubs.
Leicester City fans, who rallied to keep the club alive as
recently as 2002 when it fell into administration with debts of
30m, are now planning their Champions League trips. They
are among the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich.
Leicester City, who hadn't finished in the top two since 1929,
have won the bloody league. And Ranieri, sacked by Napoli,
Fiorentina, Valencia(twice), Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Parma,
Juventus, Roma, Inter Milan, Monaco and Greece (for losing to
the Faroe Islands in his last job prior to this one) is the man who
oversaw it all.

Fans at the King Power Stadium on Saturday will rise to salute

their Premier League champions in their final home game of the
season against Everton. Leicester supporters will not have to
bite their nails or worry how Spurs will do against Southampton
a day later. The job's done, the pressure's off. The titles theirss.
They are all HEROES, LEGENDS, HISTORY-MAKERS.