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Leicester City's Premier League Title Win: The Story Of Football's Greatest Miracle

Leicester City's Premier League Title Win: The Story Of Football's Greatest Miracle

From Ostriches And Orgies To Premier League Immortality: The Story Of Leicester City's Miracle Season

Jack Kenmare

Jack Kenmare

Claudio Ranieri might be gone but we'll always have the memory of Leicester's incredible title victory. Here's the story of that most unlikely story, originally told on the day that Spurs and Chelsea drew handing the Foxes the title...

It's happened. We now live in a world where Leicester fucking City are the champions of England. While it's an eventuality that's been on the cards for some time, the fact it's actually happened is no less surreal.

They were in the Championship two seasons ago, narrowly avoided relegation last year and their leading goalscorer looks like he has ketchup with every meal, regardless of cuisine. How the fucking hell fire did this happen?

While there are valid arguments to make about the poor quality of the Premier League in 2015/16, the failings of England's top clubs makes Leicester's achievement no less monumental.

This is a club that, just under a year ago were under the management of a mad as shit, hard as nails bloke who fought off a pack of wild dogs and called people ostriches.

Nigel Pearson of course deserves plaudits for keeping the Foxes in the top flight last season but when his son James, a youth team player at the club, decided it'd be a laugh to cement Anglo-Thai relations by taking part in a racist orgy with two of his teammates and three local girls on a club tour of Thailand, Pearson's position (and his son's) at the club became untenable and he was promptly dismissed.

Not much has been heard of him since, but presumably he returned to the wild to hunt wildcats with his bare hands and feast on what he kills.

Nigel Pearson
Nigel Pearson

When Pearson's replacement was revealed to be Claudio 'Tinkerman' Ranieri, the reaction from Leicester fans was akin to hearing a fart at a funeral. The euphoria of their late 2014/15 surge towards safety was dampened like a housewife's knickers at a Take That concert.

Local lad and crisp enthusiast Gary Lineker was quick to air his confusion at the appointment of a man who had just lasted only four months as the manager of the Greek national team.

Fast forward five months and England's finest al fresco shitter had drastically changed his tune...


Now, while the prospect of Lineker stripping down to his briefs might only set the pulses racing of females above the age of 45, the fact that we will be 'treated' to one of England's finest ever goalscorers wearing next to nothing while Mark Lawrenson uncomfortably fails to analyse the night's games in the presence of Lineker's glistening thighs is testament to the enormity of Ranieri's achievement, which has led, deservedly, to talk of the Italian being awarded an honorary knighthood.

Ranieri's reputation in England was one which unfairly focused on the extent to which he rotated his Chelsea squad during his four year stint as manager at Stamford Bridge, when in fact 'The Tinkerman' achieved admirable results with limited resources up until his final season, when he had the benefit of Roman Abramovich's billions.

Since his arrival at the King Power stadium however, the tinkering has taken a back seat to imperious man management, making former non and lower league players look like world beaters on a weekly basis.

Claudio Ranieri
Claudio Ranieri

Before this season, 32-year-old captain Wes Morgan wasn't exactly a defender that inspired confidence, especially when charged with the task of keeping the likes of Sergio Aguero, Diego Costa, Romelu Lukaku and Harry Kane at bay.

Now, the man who was signed from Nottingham Forest for £1m in 2012 has entered the pantheon of great players who have hoisted the Premier League trophy above their heads with the passionate, reckless abandon of Rafiki thrusting Simba's newborn cub into the air at the end of the Lion King.

There's also Morgan's defensive partner, Robert Huth, who was journeying around the Premier League's mid-table with Middlesbrough and then Stoke City, enjoying a casual game on Twitter like any normal human being would. Then the German transformed into a towering fortress of a centre half, defending Kasper Schmeichel's goal with the same dedication Adebayo Akinfenwa shows his Nando's loyalty card.

Huth cost Leicester just £3m, meaning the Foxes bagged themselves a title winning centre-half partnership for less than £5m. Manchester City, on the other hand, spent the debt of a third world country to bring Elaquim Mangala and Nicola Otamendi to the Etihad and look at how well that investment's turned out.

Huth Morgan
Huth Morgan

Of course, no discussion on Leicester's transfer business can take place without the Holy Trinity of Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and N'Golo Kante. The trio cost just south of £5.5m and for that money the new champions got themselves half of this year's PFA Player Of The Year shortlist, which Mahrez won and the man who broke the Premier League record for scoring in consecutive games in Vardy. Kante, meanwhile, has spent the campaign covering as much ground as a toddler on speed.

N'Golo Kante
N'Golo Kante

Trying to make sense of this band of misfits making a Premier League title winning side is equal only in terms of confusion to trying to figure out what the fucking hell the ending of Interstellar was about. In fact, Matthew McConaughey entering the fifth dimension via an intergalactic wormhole seems like a much more plausible possibility than an ex-non league striker with a penchant for casual racism firing Leicester fucking City to a Premier League title.

You could drink a decent amount of Toilet Duck and the things you would see wouldn't be any weirder than the current Premier League table.

As the Leicester train started rolling, the consensus seemed to be that, much like a Jack Wilshere return to fitness, it wouldn't last. They were expected to drop off the pace in the same manner as Ronald Koeman's Southampton did during the 2014/15 season, only this season, Chelsea, Arsenal and both Manchester clubs have been so terrifically bollocks at football that even on the odd occasion when Ranieri's men faltered, it didn't matter much.

They brushed aside Chelsea (as did everyone who could be remotely arsed, this season), beat nearest contenders Spurs at White Hart Lane and made short work of Manchester City at the Etihad.

Riyad Mahrez
Riyad Mahrez

Potential banana skins at the likes of Southampton and Sunderland recently have been negotiated with the grit and steely determination that Champions are so typically made of, while the last gasp draw at home to West Ham two weeks ago, where the 10 man Foxes were awarded a late, contentious penalty proved that even luck is on their side.

Whether Ranieri and co can maintain their seemingly unstoppable momentum into next season remains to be seen, but with Champions League football to offer potential new recruits and an increased amount of TV revenue at their disposal, the tools are there to craft Leicester into a genuine force for years to come.

Or United, City, Chelsea and Arsenal will just go and ruin everything by throwing money at marquee signings like pissed up, adulterous businessmen flinging £50 notes at lap dancers in the hope that if they pay a bit extra, the transaction will end in a victorious conquest.

Jamie Vardy
Jamie Vardy

That's the future though and in the present, Leicester City are readying to load a bus with alcopops and a playlist featuring T2 'Heartbroken' and Ultrabeat's 'Pretty Green Eyes' for Jamie Vardy to have the biggest party English football has ever fucking seen.

WORDS BY @JoeBaia

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