Leicester City: An unexpected story

If you want to boast about witnessing and living through a fairytale journey of a team in modern football to your grandchildren, there is no better example than Leicester City. Last year, any football fan would have agreed that a team other than Chelsea or Manchester City or, to some extent Arsenal or Manchester United, hardly stood a chance of winning the league. One year down the line, Leicester City F.C, a hitherto hardly known club, is on the verge of doing something which, as early as the start of the season, sounded absurd.

The Foxes got promoted to the Premier League in the 2014-15 season and were successful in keeping themselves away from relegation. They started the 2015-16 season in phenomenal fashion and were unexpectedly top of the league at the end of December, in stark contrast to being at the very bottom same time last year!

So what esoteric techniques has this club been using this season? The answers are quite simple. CONSISTENCY.  Leicester City  have done what England’s usual league favourites have strangely struggled to do. Their results have been ideal, as they have picked up points in matches in which they were the  favourites and have hardly dropped all the points against the top teams.

The engineers-in-chief for the stunning rise of Leicester City F.C have been Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez. They have debunked the myth that modern football is ruled by a select few super-rich clubs who buy players with mind-boggling price tags. They have been the Batman and Robin for Leicester City proving that prodigies are often found in the unlikeliest of places. The credit must also go to the manager, Claudio Ranieri, who has managed to keep the confidence level and team spirit at high levels.

With 66 points from 31 games and 7 more to go, Leicester City have almost secured a spot to play among Europe’s elite next season. All they need to do is keep playing the remaining games as they have played all season and it will be the first time in 20 years that a team other than England’s usual suspects will be crowned the champions (Blackburn Rovers won the league in 1995). And Leicester City  will be the deserving ones considering that it has outplayed teams who buy a single player at a rate which is equal or greater than its entire budget. As has rightly been said “Sometimes the people who no one imagines anything of, are the ones who do things no one can imagine “.