How Leicester’s fairy tale was torn apart by the Premier League’s vulture culture
To see the glorious, despairing, quirky, sometimes unfair, often inexplicable highs and lows that sport can bestow on people you would pick Jamie Vardy as the perfect case study, a striker with such extreme peaks and troughs to his career it resembles the Andes skyline.
The steepest climb, only five years from factory worker and semi-professional footballer to standing in Leicester’s King Power stadium, looking down and seeing a Premier League winners’ medal around his neck, glistening in the sun.
Then there’s the other sharp ascent within that climb. When Leicester’s players gathered at Vardy’s house in 2016 to watch Tottenham take on Chelsea, knowing that if Spurs failed to win they would be crowned the most unlikely Premier League champions in history, it was only 14 months after Vardy had thrown a party there to improve the mood with the club bottom of the league and contemplating relegation.
What a story that 2015-16 season was, the ultimate of highs. At the PFA Awards, where Vardy and three of his team-mates – Riyad Mahrez, N’Golo Kante, Wes Morgan – were named in the team of the year, Mahrez won Player of the Year and Vardy was handed a special award for scoring in a record 11 consecutive league games.
Vardy watching West Bromwich Albion against Spurs from bed and waking wife Rebekah, who had nodded off, screaming “f**king hell!” when a West Brom equaliser put Leicester one win away from the seemingly impossible.
Vardy playing with a broken wrist, with pain-killing injections in his foot, his groin, not skipping a game even after an operation.
That Chelsea-Spurs watching party at the Vardys’ that was supposed to be kept quiet – they didn’t want to look presumptuous – but by the time the striker returned home after getting a tattoo that afternoon the street outside was lined with TV cameras, photographers, journalists, fans. Word had got round that Vardy was having a party.
Yet there was also a sharp personal descent that occurred exactly six weeks after Vardy and his team-mates stepped off the victory bus parade at Victoria Park, next to the Leicester university campus, and observed fans and flags in blue and white as far as the eye could see.
Vardy came on for England after an hour but was unable to prevent that humiliating defeat to Iceland in the Euro 2016 last 16 – one of the lowest moments in the England team’s own story.
“Even fairy tale endings have their limits,” Vardy wrote in his autobiography, From Nowhere, My Story. Seven years later those six words could well apply to the situation right now, a demise that will eclipse that England defeat in Nice.
This season Leicester have been in freefall down the side of Mount Premier League and only a victory against West Ham and an Everton defeat to Bournemouth (or Everton drawing and Leicester winning by seven) on the final day will prevent them from plummeting into the bottomless pit of the Football League.
How has it come to this? From champions in 2016 to the precipice of relegation in 2023?
Titles, tears and tragedy: How Foxes’ fortunes have swung over a decade
Pearson celebrates with Vardy as Leicester avoid relegation in 2015 (Photo: Getty)
24 May 2015: Following promotion, a fine late run of seven victories in their last nine matches keeps Nigel Pearson’s side up, after being bottom for five months.
2 May 2016: Foxes pull off a 5,000-1 title win after Claudio Ranieri replaces Pearson.
23 Feb 2017: After a struggle to replicate that form, Ranieri is replaced by Craig Shakespeare. Reach Champions League quarter-finals.
25 Oct 2017: Claude Puel takes over following departure of Shakespeare.
27 Oct 2018: Owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha is killed in a helicopter crash.
26 Feb 2019: Brendan Rodgers appointed manager.
15 May 2021: Belgium midfielder Youri Tielemans scores only goal to win FA Cup final against Chelsea at Wembley.
22 May 2022: Reach Europa Conference League semis and a strong finish secures 8th.
2 Apr 2023: Rodgers is sacked and replaced by Dean Smith after several losing runs. City have won once in last three months.
Foxes finishes
2014-15: 14th
2015-16: Champions
2016-17: 12th
2017-18: 9th
2018-19: 9th
2019-20: 5th
2020-21: 5th
2021-22: 8th
Truthfully, the fairy tale was slowly filleted by the country’s best sides, its bones picked apart and used as toothpicks by the elite.
N’Golo Kante arrived for £5.6m from Caen, won the league then was off to Chelsea for £30m the very same summer. Danny Drinkwater followed for £35m a year later. Mahrez the year after to Manchester City for £60m.
And perhaps the demise would have been quicker had Vardy not decided to stay. The country’s most affluent clubs were so alarmed by Leicester that Arsenal triggered his £20m release clause only 25 days after the final game of the season and only Vardy’s belief that Leicester could continue challenging made up his mind to turn them down.
His 104 Premier League goals – and one Golden Boot – between winning the title and last June, at an average of 17 per season, was enough to keep most teams competitive. Is it a coincidence this season, now 36 years old, he’s only scored three and Leicester are where they are?
As well as Vardy’s goals Leicester kept recruiting well. Harry Maguire from Hull for £17m. James Maddison £22.5m from Norwich. Youri Tielemans £40m from Monaco. They had five top 10 finishes, two top five, the FA Cup win in 2021.
But slowly there were more transfer misses, not enough hits and still the elite nibbled away at them. Maguire became the best defender in England and Manchester United took him. Ben Chilwell emerged from the academy but Chelsea had him off them too.
Brendan Rodgers warned from the outset of this season that not enough had been done to bolster and freshen the squad. The owners sold Wesley Fofana to Chelsea for £70m while Kasper Schmeichel, their title-winning goalkeeper, decided he fancied a new challenge at Nice.
Relegation will force a hard reset. Harvey Barnes and Maddison are expected to leave this summer. Indeed eight first-team players are out of contract in the coming months and they have a hefty wage bill that must come down so many won’t be renewed.
Th parachute payments designed to soften the thud of landing in the Championship will be owed to Macquarie, an Australian bank that has loaned the club hundreds of millions of pounds in recent years.
It could be a long climb back up. But it’ll sure make a good story.
“Nearly all of us in that team had suffered rejection at one stage or another, quite a few had played lower league football and, let’s be honest, clubs like Leicester aren’t supposed to win the title,” Vardy later reflected. “I think that’s why everyone found our story so inspirational, not just in terms of football or sport, but more generally.
“It shows that anything’s possible in life if you get the right group of people together. There I was at the age of 29, after spending almost a decade in non-league football, holding the Premier League trophy above my head. It proves what you can achieve if you put your mind to it.”
If they are relegated this season it will also prove what a harsh, unforgiving landscape the Premier League really is. But it isn’t over quite yet. On the final day could they just cling on? They have overcome far worse odds. They were 5,000-1 to win the Premier League. They are 4-1 to stay up.
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