What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by — Richard III, William Shakespeare
THERE is scrubland where Lineker Road meets Filbert Street; rubble where it all began. From the remnants of Leicester City’s old ground, between the terraced rows, past a single outcrop of student flats, there is a clear vista to the King Power Stadium a few hundred yards away. Walk closer and you can make out the piercing blue of the exterior, the word “Fearless” illuminated in white.
Fearless is daubed inside the dressing room, too — as a Twitter hashtag, naturally — and if anything can encapsulate the club’s blissful rise over the past 10 months and how that growing confidence is mirrored in the city, perhaps it is this. “It’s incredible, a fairy story,” Alan Birchenall, the club’s ambassador, said. “I call it ‘Walt Disney’. Can we think the unthinkable?”
After 25 games last season, Leicester were bottom of the Barclays Premier League. “They were gone,” Gary Lineker said. “No chance of staying up, barring a miracle. Nobody gave them a prayer,” Micky Adams, manager when they moved home in 2002 and then stumbled into administration, said. “You just thought, ‘That’s it,’” said Gary Silke, of The Fox fanzine.
A baffling, beautiful year on, Leicester are top. It feels like a moment, although there have been a few of those. “The miracle came and it carried on,” Lineker, a former player, the club’s honorary vice-president and, through it all, a supporter, said. “It’s mad.” Silke considered the context. “It’s been really good fun up until now,” he said. “Now it’s starting to get a bit scary. I’m beginning to wonder.”
At the start of the season, the odds of Leicester winning the title were 5,000:1. “Strangely, it makes you more tense than floundering somewhere near the bottom as normal,” Lineker said. “It’s a different vibe. And one we’ve never experienced as a club.”
Leicester have never been champions, never lifted the FA Cup. Martin O’Neill was manager during “a most glorious time”, securing promotion in 1996 and leading them to the League Cup twice. “My team won the odd thing and we never finished outside of the top ten. This side has the potential to emulate and surpass what we achieved,” he said.
After being discovered in a nearby car park, Richard III’s remains were reinterred inside Leicester Cathedral on March 26. Since the king’s reburial, Leicester have lost three league matches, a coincidence that reflects a general sense of renewal.
Before Leicester played West Ham United on April 4, supporters found cardboard clap-banners attached to their seats with elastic bands. “You thought, ‘Oh God, corporate fan stuff,’ “ Silke said, “but it made a lot of noise and it lifted everyone.” The team won 2-1 and what began as a novelty is now a tradition, one that costs the club pounds 12,000 every game.
They have fine players, too. “Good scouting,” is the alchemy, Birchenall said. “Steve Walsh Sr. I won’t laud him too much because I don’t want other clubs trying to nick him,” added the man who played for a swashbuckling Leicester side in the 1970s and, on and off, has been associated with them ever since.
Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante cost about pounds 7 million between them. The players have knitted under Claudio Ranieri, Pearson’s successor. “Sometimes a team just comes together like a jigsaw,” Silke said. “They’ve been wisely picked, they’re asked to do what they’re good at and they love each other. And the manager has got a very light touch.”
The same applies to the club’s Thai ownership. The wider football world looked askance when Ranieri was appointed (after four dismal games in charge of Greece, including a home defeat by the Faroe Islands), but within the city it is different.
“I look at Chelsea, who I played for, Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City and they’re corporate,” Birchenall said. “Maybe it sounds a bit fingers down the throat, but we’re family. It’s a close-knit thing.”
The combination is powerful. “We’ve had good days and bad days, nobody really interested, and now we’ve had Richard III and people have noticed a bit,” Birchenall said. “And then because of the reach of the Premier League, suddenly we’re global. We’ve overtaken Richard III! We’re not just that little place next to junction 21 of the M1 any more. When you hear those words on a Saturday night, ‘Leicester City are top’ you think, ‘Oh my God!’ It’s such a sweet sound.”
And it is no longer fantasy. Lineker first went to Filbert Street with his dad and grandfather; three of his four sons are Leicester fans, “and for them, it’s magical”. The euphoria is intoxicating; on Twitter, the former England striker, who has a street named after him and is a freeman of the city, promised to present the first BBC Match of the Day programme of next season, “in just my undies” if the team win the title.
“I hope I have to do it,” Lineker said. “I did say ‘undies’ which hopefully means I can wear a vest, because I don’t think the nation needs to see my nipples. But I’d have to do it and I’d be thrilled to. Unbelievably embarrassed, but thrilled.”
Love thy Leicester: Leicester City, nicknamed “The Foxes”, are an English football club from the city of Leicester in the East Midlands area of England. The club was founded in 1884 as Leicester Fosse because they played on a field near Fosse Road. After World War I, Leicester Fosse died a penniless death and Leicester City was born after a revamp.
Why is everyone talking about them now? They have taken the English Premier League by storm, leaving big boys Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United... chasing them — 25 games into the season, they are on top with 53 points. They are beating them all on the counter-attack, with speed and skill. At the same stage last year, they were at the bottom of the table, with 17 points, ultimately finishing 14th. Just to get a David vs Goliath perspective: Manchester City spent £55 million for star signing Kevin De Bruyne before the season; Leicester’s combined squad cost is £54.4 million. Get?!
Why haven’t we heard of them all these years? They’ve spent the major part of their history yo-yoing in the first two divisions of English football.
The Highs:
• In their 132 years, they have spent just a solitary season (2008-09) outside the top two divisions of English football.
• They have quite an academy to boast of, producing English legends like Peter Shilton, Gary Lineker.
• They have won the League Cup thrice (1964, 1997, 2000).
The Lows:
• They hold the dismal record of playing the most number of FA Cup finals (4), without ever having won it.
• The club ran into debt in 2002, only to be pulled back to financial safety by a consortium backed by Gary Lineker.
What’s working for them all of a sudden? Let’s hear it from Matthew Syed of The Times — “Leicester City compete with skill, discipline and tactical coherence, but the most thrilling aspect of their play is the collective commitment. They run for each other, applaud one another, celebrate together, protect each other and, in a Platonic sense, love each other. I have never witnessed a team so thrillingly exceed the sum of their parts.”
Who are their star players? “Riyad Mahrez is a magician and Jamie Vardy a striker of breathtaking industry and guile (one or the other must win player of the season), but the true magic of Leicester emerges from the collective,” writes Syed. This collective was even evident from the little Copenhagen trip the players had in December, dressed as superheroes! Still, Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante deserve special mention.
What’s their mantra? “This is not teamwork in word, or even deed. It is a teamwork from the soul,” writes Syed. More than anything, their bigger, fancier and far richer opponents have been “out-teamed”.
They must have a top coach? In Claudio Ranieri, Leicester have a man with massive experience, who knows his way around the Premier League having managed Chelsea in 2000-04. Minimum strategy and maximum result has been his key to “out-Fox” the big guns. But Ranieri has never won a big one. Will May 2016 change that?
Can they really go on and win it? For the past few months, the world has been waiting for the boys in blue to slip. They haven’t. If Leicester can beat Arsenal on Sunday, if they can hold their nerve, if.... Over to Matthew Syed: “Can Leicester sustain it? The bookmakers now have them as favourites, which creates a rather treacherous psychological dynamic. The plucky outsiders now have something to lose, the possibility of approaching the threshold of glory but falling just short.... What seems certain is that neutrals across the world will be rooting for Leicester.... A group of decent individuals, who have grown to improbable stature as a team, are 13 matches away from one of the most astonishing achievements in the history of sport.”
Will Leicester City win this English Premier League? Tell t2@abp.in
George Caulkin
(The Times, London)
