The Good
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Oh God! The Good.
Where do we start?
A team that shows the true power of the collective
While the three exceptional players of the season have been Riyad Mahrez (PFA Footballer of the Year – the first African to win it), Jamie Vardy (who broke Ruud Van Nistelrooy’s long-standing Premiership record by scoring in 11 consecutive games) and N’Golo Kante (who looks like he runs around even while asleep), each and every member of the squad has pulled their weight in this campaign.
Robert Huth and Wes Morgan have formed the kind of old-fashioned brawn-and-brawn central defensive partnership that sends shivers down opposition forwards’ spines, Christian Fuchs and Danny Simpson have been tirelessly superb bombing up and down their respective flanks and behind them, Kasper Schmeichel has been quietly impressive.
Danny Drinkwater and the aforementioned Kante have owned the midfield in almost every game they have played – often playing against three men central midfields, the two have been magnificent and have put in some truly superhuman performances, along the way resurrecting the dying art of the box-to-box midfielder.
Mahrez on the right and Marc Albrighton on the left have been superb, their dribbling imaginative, their passing incisive, their crossing accurate and their goal-scoring important.
Also Read: 5 Leicester City players who will be targeted by European Superpowers
The frighteningly quick Vardy has been ably supported by the tireless Shinji Okazaki, and by the battering ram that is Leonardo Ulloa.
To a man, they have run their socks off every game, chasing and harrying when not in possession – their league topping interception numbers very much a lead indicator of the pressure the entire team puts on the opposition - and swarming forward instantly when they get the ball back.
Their pass percentages look so bad because more often than not their midfielders look for the killer through ball or an instant first-time long ball. Their willingness to take risks combined with a vein of underrated skill that runs through the team has made for some exciting, no-nonsense football.
They aren’t winning games through luck, or through the ineptitude of the opposition, they’re winning them because they are playing better football, plain and simple.
A manager who for once is a genuinely likeable person and owners that match
The genuinely nice guy rarely succeeds as a football manager.
As in life, you might say.
Have a look at the three most successful managers in modern English football – Alex Ferguson was preposterously arrogant, Arsene Wenger is the sorest sore loser in all history, and anyone who thinks Jose Mourinho is a nice man should immediately see a psychiatrist.
Claudio Ranieri has spent his entire managerial career proving this theorem correct.
The perennial runner-up hasn’t won a single first division title in thirty years of managing top teams in the Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1 and the Premier League. How apt that it is he, who spearheads this most unlikely of title challenges.
Any manager who has the guts to admit his predecessor was right – and not tinker with a successful system, while slowly improving it and fuelling hitherto unseen self-belief deserves credit. Any manager that rewards his players for keeping clean sheets by buying them all pizza deserves to have statues made in his honour.
The owners have helped too, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha eschewing the traditional foreigner-billionaire format of operating football clubs for a more sensible approach.
Their non-interference in footballing matters has let Ranieri run the club just the way he would like it - buying (and not selling) the players he wants (and doesn’t want to let go) and allowing a rare team spirit to be fostered.
They have treated the fans – the most important part of any club’s fabric – with utmost respect, their little gestures of affection like celebrating New Year’s by providing free beer (and soft drinks to the under aged/dis-inclined) to everyone in the stadium and Srivaddhanaprabha’s birthday with doughnuts and more beer, the kind of thing you hope every football club did.
Even in more serious cases, like that of the racist incident involving James Pearson, Tom Hopper and Adam Smith last year, have been swiftly and decisively dealt with – with minimum fuss and a zero tolerance policy.
Besides, Thailand’s ninth richest person also arguably has enough marketing acumen to understand that nothing sells quite as well as an underdog story. Business is probably not going to be as affected as most people think.
The sheer romance of the story
Yes, it’s clichéd.
Yes, it has been overplayed at times.
And yet, yes, it counts.
As adults, one of the hard truths of life that most of us learn is that the ones with the big money usually win.
Everyone says money doesn’t matter, passion and hard-work will get you places, but generally, those places tend to be shut off from the places that really matter.
So, when you see someone walk around with a smile, smashing this societal maxim into smithereens, upsetting the apple-cart and reaching places they have no right to be at, they tend to become heroes for the lot of us who have never thought this possible.
Not heroes in the ilk of a Cristiano Ronaldo, or a Lionel Messi – unimaginable and unmatchable talents that are pure sources of joy - but heroes in the sense that if these guys are doing it, with guts, passion and hard work against the mega-bucks of the opposition, maybe, just maybe, we can too.
They are heroes because they are not an expensively assembled team of superstars, but an eclectic collection of rejects (Drinkwater, Albrighton, Schmeichels), journeymen (Morgan, Huth, Vardy, Mahrez), unknowns (Kante, Ulloa) and has-beens (Ranieri himself), whose combined wage demands wouldn’t get you a full forward line in any of Europe’s top sides and yet, here they are doing the unthinkable.
They are heroes because they give us hope.
They may have their flaws, but Leicester City’s run towards the 2015-16 English Premier League title will surely be remembered as one of the greatest things to have happened to modern football, and indeed modern sport.
Because Hope matters.
Here’s to hope, three more points and Leicester City Football Club.
