Leicester City’s Premier League title win feels even more miraculous than it did two years ago… it’s the greatest sporting achievement ever
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SOMETIMES you witness a sporting achievement — a great goal, a classic match, an extraordinary personal feat — and it can feel like the greatest of all time.
Then a day or two later, with a little perspective, you realise it wasn’t quite as historic as all that.
Yet at a distance of two-and-a-half years, Leicester’s Premier League title triumph somehow feels even more miraculous now than it did back in the dream-like days of 2015-16.
That is not just a rose-tinted sentiment felt in the nightmarish aftermath of the death of Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the man who bankrolled that extraordinary achievement and who perished in a horrific helicopter crash on Saturday night.
Back in 2016 many believed that Leicester’s success might somehow inspire other clubs from outside the Premier League’s "big six" to challenge for the title, or at least for a Champions League place.
Yet the league table is more polarised than ever between the haves and have-nots — and despite the funding of billionaire Vichai, Leicester remain outside of the roped-off elite.
And so now it is clearer than ever that Claudio Ranieri’s pre-season relegation favourites — made up of journeymen, misfits and rejects — blew the bloody doors off a well-barricaded closed shop to perform the most spectacular sporting heist our eyes will ever marvel at.
The classic starting XI still rolls of the tongue: Kasper Schmeichel, Danny Simpson, Robert Huth, Wes Morgan, Christian Fuchs, N’Golo Kante, Danny Drinkwater, Marc Albrighton, Shinji Okazaki, Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy.
And Leo Ulloa on for Okazaki after the Japanese forward had run himself into the ground for an hour. Then a cameo from club stalwart Andy King.
That’s how it seemed week after glorious gob-smacking week as a team who’d cheated relegation with an incredible late run the previous season — only to lose their successful manager Nigel Pearson — somehow defied all reason.
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Those who put money on the Foxes to be champions at odds of 5,000-1 backed the longest-priced winner not just in the history of English football but in any event, in any sport, anywhere on Earth.
Over a 38-game season, Leicester claiming the title ought to have been impossible. Yet they won the thing by ten clear points.
First there was Vardy, the former non-leaguer, factory-worker and electronic tag-wearing ne’er-do-well, who set a Premier League record by scoring in 11 consecutive matches.
Then there were those two previously unknown bargain buys from French football, unearthed by chief scout Steve Walsh and polished by Ranieri.
Mahrez, the Algerian winger with Bambi legs and angel’s feet, and Kante, the superhuman dynamo with the stature of half a man but the stamina of ten.
Leicester played three in midfield, it was said. Drinkwater with Kante either side.
And while 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface was covered by water, Kante took care of the rest.
Then there was Leicester’s ageing, unsung back four — almost cartoon-like in their impenetrability as the Foxes chalked up several 1-0 wins.
And the cacophony of those clapper-wielding supporters at the King Power living out the wildest fantasy of any fan who never chose the glory-hunting path of following a major club.
You may still recall at which point you became convinced the whole feverish dream was actually for real.
Was it the night Leicester sealed Jose Mourinho’s sacking with a 2-1 victory over fallen champions Chelsea before Christmas?
Or Vardy’s rocket strike in a win over Liverpool? Or the classic counter-attacking 3-1 success at Manchester City?
For me, it was actually the third and final defeat of Leicester’s campaign, at title rivals Arsenal on Valentine’s Day.
The Foxes had been reduced to ten men by Simpson’s sending-off early in the second half and were beaten by an injury-time Danny Welbeck winner.
Yet they had been the better side and while the Gunners celebrated a 2-1 win as if they’d clinched the title, Ranieri’s men gritted their teeth and won five of their next six by the only goal to pull clear.
The title was clinched on a Monday night when Chelsea roared back from two down to draw with Tottenham, Leicester’s last remaining rivals, in a blood-curdling Battle of Stamford Bridge.
Ranieri’s boys celebrated with a party at Vardy’s house, true to the words of their supporters’ anthem.
But as so many of those players have acknowledged over the past 48 hours, none of it would have been possible without the influence of their benign Thai owner, Vichai.
He was the dreammaker. The man who suspended disbelief and turned cynics into believers.
The man who still makes us wonder, two-and-a-half years hence, whether that whole fantastical thing could really have happened at all.