Big day through the lens of a Leicester fan
The moment Eden Hazard's swooping shot went past Hugo Lloris and hit the back of the net will be forever etched in the mind of every Leicester City fan. Describing the feeling of supporting the team that just pulled off the greatest shock in sporting history - with the added strangeness of having to cheer on another team to beat your closest rivals - is an impossible task. I, like many others, only really began to entertain the thought of Leicester winning the Premier League title in early February after the Foxes dismantled super-rich Manchester City away from home 3-1. That's three months of tension and hope while trying to digest an unbelievable run of form that has led to a team given odds of 5,000-to-1 winning the league. The Premier League isn't like a 100 meter sprint, where a race is decided over 10 seconds, or a golf or tennis tournament where the outcome is decided over a few days, or even a World Cup where a team can get hot from the barter-finals onward and challenge the big boys. The Premier League is nine long months and few outcomes completely come out of the blue. After each astonishing win, there was a period of digestion and trying to understand how a team that escaped relegation in the most extraordinary circumstances last season can go on to win the toughest league in the world with more or less the same group of players. There has been lots of time to understand how Leicester got themselves in this position, but it's reality still seems remarkably difficult to grasp.Of Leicester's starting 11, nine were in a relegation dog fight last year. The only additions were N'Golo Kante, who was signed for about 7 million pounds ($10.3 million) from provincial French side Caen and was playing in the eighth tier of French football only a few years ago, and Shinji Okazaki, an industrious forward who makes up in effort what he lacks in technique.
Watching the games, it's actually quite simple to see how such a group of unheralded players have pulled this off. They work harder than any other team, they are more organized, they execute and they have just enough skill - or rather Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy do - to pull a win out of nowhere. The bit that is hard to understand is that Vardy was working in a factory not long ago and considering retirement just two years ago, and Mahrez cost Leicester just 400,000 pounds and was signed with the minimum of fanfare from a second tier French club. The disparity in last year's fortunes and this year's are almost impossible to comprehend. The team, under the guidance of perpetual underdog Claudio Ranieri, however, went from relegation certs to champions. A title for Leicester City in itself is improbable, even if the club had slowly improved over a number of years, eventually challenging the big boys, a la Southampton or Stoke City. But given these particular circumstances, it boggles the mind. The odds of 5,000/1 are significant; the odds of Hugh Hefner being a virgin are 1,000/1, while Elvis being alive and Kim Kardashian becoming president are events that are more likely to occur according to the bookies.
It is one thing for Leicester to win the title under any circumstances - it took us 132 years to get our first title - but winning it in a year where everyone, including myself, was convinced we would be relegated is hard to understand. Every Leicester fan will remember the feeling of winning it but we may never understand it.
Watching the games, it's actually quite simple to see how such a group of unheralded players have pulled this off. They work harder than any other team, they are more organized, they execute and they have just enough skill - or rather Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy do - to pull a win out of nowhere. The bit that is hard to understand is that Vardy was working in a factory not long ago and considering retirement just two years ago, and Mahrez cost Leicester just 400,000 pounds and was signed with the minimum of fanfare from a second tier French club. The disparity in last year's fortunes and this year's are almost impossible to comprehend. The team, under the guidance of perpetual underdog Claudio Ranieri, however, went from relegation certs to champions. A title for Leicester City in itself is improbable, even if the club had slowly improved over a number of years, eventually challenging the big boys, a la Southampton or Stoke City. But given these particular circumstances, it boggles the mind. The odds of 5,000/1 are significant; the odds of Hugh Hefner being a virgin are 1,000/1, while Elvis being alive and Kim Kardashian becoming president are events that are more likely to occur according to the bookies.
It is one thing for Leicester to win the title under any circumstances - it took us 132 years to get our first title - but winning it in a year where everyone, including myself, was convinced we would be relegated is hard to understand. Every Leicester fan will remember the feeling of winning it but we may never understand it.