I have never been much of a football fan, but the story of Leicester City who have just won the English Premiership is right up there with the greatest-ever sporting triumphs.
Rags to riches is the most enduring theme of storytelling and this season’s legend of Leicester is perhaps the ultimate modern David versus Goliath parable; which sounds like the usual purple prose you will find in most sports reports. Except it’s true.
The English Premiership is a world brand. I know it has many followers in South Africa, but the clubs supported are the glamour ones; Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool. Few down south will have even heard of lowly Leicester City, let alone support them.
However, the Premiership, which started in 1992, is specifically designed for rich clubs to get richer. It’s a competition in which the same handful of top teams fight for victory while the rest scrap it out to avoid relegation.
The battleground is not just on the pitch: Russian oil barons and Arab sheiks go chequebook to chequebook. In the league’s 24-year history, only five clubs have ever won it. And it’s always the same five clubs.
Leicester City, the ultimate no-hoper, has now made that six.
To give an example of how extraordinary this is, the bookies were giving odds on a second coming of Elvis at 2,000 – 1. The odds they gave on Leicester City winning were 5,000 – 1.
But this is not just the clichéd rags to riches fable. Just consider some of the obstacles that were in the way.
For a start, the club went bankrupt in 2002, owing £50 million which included £6 million in tax.
Then they would have been relegated last year but for a dramatic late surge that scraped them through with a couple of fluke goals. The last-minute hero of that season, manager Nigel Pearson, was then sacked after three players, including his son James, were involved in an orgy in Bangkok.
The current manager Claudio Ranieri, an Italian who looks more like an opera singer than a footballer, was once acrimoniously fired as manager of Greece after losing to the Faroe Islands.
Their leading scorer, Jamie Vardy, was playing for little-known Fleetwood Town in the semi-professional English fifth league just four years ago.
Their other stars are Riyad Mahrez, an Algerian who previously played for the Le Havre reserves, and N’Golo Kante, who was signed from the French second division.
The trio collectively cost £7.1-million, peanuts in the Premiership. In fact, Leicester’s annual wage bill is £57-million, compared to £228-million at Manchester United.
At the kick-off of this season, Leicester were regarded as a bunch of losers with two left feet and tipped for relegation. Those who took the odds at 5,000 – 1 of them winning include some drunks with a sense of humour and a student who in one fell swoop has paid off his entire university loan.
But what makes Leicester’s victory even sweeter is that they have played with absolute abandon. They have just gone for it in every game, attacking fearlessly, adventurously and more importantly, an iron resolve never to give up. They have played more like teams of the past, an enthusiasm and exuberance that the cold, calculated professional game has vanquished. As one veteran sports writer said, if there was a single word needed to sum up Leicester, it is ‘defiance’.
However, English Football is English football. This may be a fairy tale, but the Leicester players are hardly a bunch of little drummer boys. For example, their star striker Vardy has a conviction for assault at a pub and had to play one his games wearing an ankle tag. His team-mate, right-back Danny Simpson has done community service for throttling the mother of his child.
Then just to bring some class to the table, something English football is famous for, we have the case of diehard Leicester fan Lee Jobber, whose body is completely covered with football tattoos.
Fortunately for him, he has a tiny patch of un-inked skin on his inner thigh. Well, not any more. It’s now been tattooed with a portrait of manager Claudio Ranieri.