Against All Odds: The Epic Tale of Leicester City's Landmark Season
The chances of Kim Kardashian becoming the next US president was higher than Leicester winning the title
The incredible story of Leicester City's historic Premier League triumph in the 2015-16 season is for everyone who needs a bit of inspiration. Against all odds, this underdog team defied the norms of a sport heavily influenced by financial might. Through brilliant tactical execution, bribes from the coach, and outstanding overachievers, Leicester captured the attention of the soccer world, giving hope to small clubs everywhere.
Defying the odds
Soccer is a sport dominated by goliaths with deep pockets. Money buys the players, which expedites revenue growth, and ultimately wins titles. Such is the case in the English Premier League. Since the inception of the modern-day Premier League 31 seasons ago, it has only been won by seven teams:
Manchester United - 13 titles
Manchester City - 8 titles
Chelsea - 5 titles
Arsenal - 3 titles
Liverpool - 1 title
Blackburn - 1 title
Leicester - 1 title
Of all the titles won, Leicester City’s in the 2015-16 season was the most improbable. The team’s entire combined salary was about £38 million, a third of Manchester United’s wages. Only three teams in the league that year had a lower wage bill than Leicester. Leicester's entire squad was bought for about £72 million, seven times less than what Manchester City paid for their team (£415 million).
Leicester’s Premier League title run is one of the biggest underdog stories – in any sport. The U.S. hockey team beating the Soviet Union on their way to winning the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics might be the best comparison. The big difference is that Leicester had to do it over a 38-game season while U.S. hockey had to do it over a seven-game tournament.
History of Leicester
Leicester is a moderately sized city about 100 miles north of London. It's a city that might be better known for its rugby team – the Leicester Tigers – than its soccer team. Riyad Mahrez, a member of the 2015-16 title team admitted he'd never heard of Leicester when they signed him saying, "I thought they were a rugby club."
Its football team has had a relatively unmemorable existence, flirting back and forth between the top two leagues in England, being promoted and relegated regularly. Up until the 2015-16 season, Leicester had never won the league title in its 132-year history. Their best league finish was second in 1928-29 when an average-sized home cost around $4,500. In the modern Premier League, they had never finished higher than eighth.
During the 2014-15 campaign, Leicester found themselves in a relegation battle and only narrowly stayed in the Premier League after amazingly winning seven of their last nine games.
Summer scandal
A significant moment of the 2015-16 season happened before the season started. During the summer, the team was in Thailand for a post-season tour. Three reserve players, including the son of the manager, Nigel Pearson, filmed a racist sex tape. After the videos circulated on the internet, all three players were let go. Nigel Pearson was also sacked because of his link to the incident. Aside from a short five-month stint at Watford, Pearson hasn’t been a manager for a top-division club since. With Pearson out, it paved the way for the first piece of the championship puzzle to be put in place.
Claudio Ranieri takes the helm
Enter Claudio Ranieri, a 64-year-old Italian who seemingly had his best coaching years behind him. Leicester supporters weren’t too fond of the hire, partly due to his short tenure as the manager of the Greek National Team. His time there ended disastrously after only four games with a loss to the Faroe Islands, a country with a population of just over 50,000. He was criticized for his complex tactics that were difficult for his players to adjust to. Later he reflected on the experience saying:
“I made a mistake when I was manager of Greece…I had four matches and for each game, I trained the players for just three days. That is 12 days of training. What can I do in just 12 days? I had to rebuild a national team in just 12 days. What could I do? I am not a magician.”
A decade earlier, he was the manager of Chelsea, one of the giants of English soccer. During his time in West London, he was nicknamed the ‘Tinkerman’ due to his constant fiddling with the team’s tactics. He proved to do the exact opposite during Leicester’s title run.
Within a week of being hired, Ranieri took a blow when he failed to re-sign Esteban Cambiasso, one of the bright spots for Leicester the year before. Later, Jamie Vardy, Leicester’s best striker was caught on camera racially abusing a man in a casino. Defender Danny Simpson avoided prison time after attempting to strangle his girlfriend and was given 300 hours of community service instead. Despite these two incidents, Ranieri kept the two players on the squad. This was hardly a team full of Boy Scouts, but Ranieri knew he had a group of misfits that had something to prove.
Despite all the negative news, there were some bright spots during the summer, which helped add key pieces to the championship puzzle. Ranieri managed to find a few transfer bargains that proved to be invaluable during Leicester’s title run:
N’Golo Kanté - £5.6 million
Robert Huth - £3 million
Christian Fuchs - Free
Shinji Okazaki - £7 million
Each of these signings started for Ranieri and contributed significantly to the title run.
The starting XI
Instead of tinkering and rotating his squad, Ranieri stuck with his starting XI week in and week out. They amazingly played 87% of the club’s Premier League minutes. Leicester’s starting XI included:
Goalkeeper: Schmeichel
Defenders: Simpson, Huth, Morgan, Fuchs
Midfielders: Mahrez, Kanté, Drinkwater, Albrighton
Strikers: Okazaki, Vardy
Morgan, who had helped Leicester in their promotion to the Premier League two seasons previous, and Huth, who was rejected by Chelsea earlier in his career, set the foundation for the defense. Schmeichel was an overachieving goalkeeper mostly known for being the son of the legendary Manchester United goalkeeper, Peter Schmeichel.
Drinkwater was released by Manchester United after 13 years with zero first-team appearances. Kanté was playing in the third-tier league in France in 2013. Both were key in stabilizing the midfield and were relentless defensively, propelling counter attacks after winning the ball. Albrighton, an Aston Villa afterthought, and Mahrez, a tiny £500,000 signing from Le Havre, made magic on the wings.
Vardy and Okazaki led the attack. Vardy was called up to the England National Team in 2015 but was playing for Fleetwood Town, four divisions below the Premier League, just four years earlier.
Team tactics
At the start of the season, Leicester had 5,000 to 1 odds to win the Premier League – worse odds than Kim Kardashian becoming the next US president.
"I thought they were a rugby club."
Riyad Mahrez on Leicester
Ranieri knew his squad wasn’t as talented as some larger clubs. He decided to use a 4-4-2 formation, a formation that had gone out of style in favor of a more attacking style of play. Ranieri’s plan was simple – defend deep into their own half and then counter attack when they gained possession. They were so committed to the cause that Leicester had the third-lowest possession percentage in the Premier League that season at 44.7%.
The strikers, Vardy and Okazaki, rarely pressed opposing defenses, ensuring they kept their defensive shape and didn’t leave gaps that would expose their teammates. When Leicester did gain possession, Vardy used his pace to get behind the defense and devastated opponents in the blink of an eye. He was the leading goal scorer in the Premier League in 2015-16 with 24 goals.
The wingers, Mahrez and Albrighton, were instructed to stay compact towards the middle of the field to force opponents wide. When defending players out wide, they would organize to force the opposition to play backward or inside where teammates were tight on the opposition. When Leicester was in position, Mahrez was given free rein to take on opponents 1v1 and created countless scoring chances.
The center midfielders were disciplined in defending their zone and wouldn’t chase the opposition into spaces where they couldn’t impact the game. Kanté was outstanding and had the most tackles (175), interceptions (156), and blocked passing lanes (81) in the Premier League that season.
Ranieri also instructed his team to eliminate risk. Instead of playing out of the back or holding on to the ball in tight spaces, he instructed his team to boot the ball downfield if necessary, a tactic that has largely fallen out of favor in modern-day soccer. They only attempted on average 282 short passes per game (3rd last in the league) and played the fifth most long balls per game (72). This was also used to hide some of the deficiencies of the team. Their two center-backs were hard-nosed defenders but weren’t the most technically gifted. Reducing the amount of time they had on the ball eliminated potential mistakes.
The title run
Leicester opened the 2015-16 campaign by beating Sunderland 4-2. Then they continued collecting points, going unbeaten in their first six games. However, Ranieri wasn’t satisfied. Leicester had yet to have a clean sheet and gave up five goals to Arsenal in a 5-2 defeat in late September.
To tighten up the defense, Ranieri bribed the team similarly to how you would motivate a group of teenage boys – with pizza. Though the Leicester trainers and nutritionists surely didn’t like the bribe, it worked. The team started to string together wins without giving up a goal.
In November, Vardy set a Premier League record by scoring in 11 consecutive games. The record still stands today. In what is now a famous call from the commentator Tyler Martin, he proclaimed:
“Vardy! It's eleven. It's heaven for Jamie Vardy. Hold the back page. Hold the front page. A Leicester player has smashed the record.”
After beating Chelsea in December, the Leicester players started to believe that a special run was possible. Mahrez and Kanté quietly whispered to one another, “Imagine if…” But then they would stop themselves and brush it off, knowing there was still a long way to go.
When asked if the team could continue winning over an extended period, Ranieri responded:
“Look, I am very confident because if Leicester last season saved themselves in the last two months that means the stamina is fantastic. Why can’t we continue to run, run, run? We are like Forrest Gump. Leicester is Forrest Gump.”
February rolled around and Leicester only had two Premier League losses. Arsenal’s manager Arsene Wenger said, “It’s very romantic – and I understand the whole country being behind them.”
As the winter turned to spring, it seemed like teams were starting to finally respect Leicester. Opposing managers started changing their tactics, which led to Vardy going eight games without a goal from open play as defenses started sitting deeper. However, Leicester still found ways to win. As teams took away Leicester’s counter attack, Ranieri tightened up his defense and would wait games out until they got their one chance to bury away a winner. They strung together five 1-0 victories from the end of February to the beginning of April.
With only five games remaining, Leicester won 2-0 at Sunderland, giving them a 10-point cushion atop the Premier League. The team knew the title was within reach and the Leicester fan chants echoed throughout the stadium. It wasn’t until only four games remained that Ranieri finally admitted to dreaming of winning the title.
With only three games remaining Leicester found themselves traveling to the hallowed grounds of Old Trafford to play Manchester United with a chance to clinch the title with a win. They left Manchester with only a 1-1 draw, so the title run wasn’t quite yet complete. The next day though, they did clinch as Tottenham failed to beat Chelsea, making it mathematically impossible for anyone to catch Leicester with just two games left.
What makes the title run that much more impressive is that it wasn’t very close. Leicester ended up winning the league by 10 points, which is good for the 10th largest margin of victory since the modern-day Premier League inception in 1992. What was supposed to be a team in a relegation battle ended up beating out some of the largest checkbooks in soccer.
Where are they now?
With winning comes the demand from high-paying teams. A few of the Leicester players from the 2015-16 title-winning team went on to bigger contracts elsewhere.
N’Golo Kanté: The year after winning the Premier League, Kanté made his move to Chelsea where he won the Premier League and Champions League. He also won the World Cup with the French National Team. For a short period of time, he was considered one of the best midfielders in the world. He now is playing in the Saudi Pro League.
Riyad Mahrez: Mahrez left Leicester for Manchester City in 2018 for a transfer fee of £60m, making him the most expensive African player and City’s most expensive signing at the time. He didn’t play much during his first year with the team but broke into the squad more in subsequent years. He ended up winning the Premier League four times and the Champions League once with Manchester City before making a move to the Saudi Pro League in 2023.
Danny Drinkwater: Drinkwater left for Chelsea in 2017, but the move proved to be anything but successful. He was loaned out four times. At the end of his contract in 2022, Chelsea didn’t re-sign him and he announced his retirement shortly after at the age of 33.
Jamie Vardy: After the 2015-16 season, Arsenal made a £22 million bid for Vardy, but he decided to re-sign a 4-year deal with Leicester. He represented England in the 2016 Euros and the 2018 World Cup but was used sparingly. He is the only remaining player from the 2015-16 title team suiting up for Leicester this season.
Claudio Ranieri: Ranieri managed Leicester one more year before being sacked halfway through the season. Since then he has coached at six different clubs. His biggest accomplishment since winning the Premier League was going back to the Italian club, Cagliari, during the winter of 2023. He previously managed the club from 1988-1991. In his first season back with the club, Ranieri successfully propelled Cagliari from Serie B to Serie A, the top league in Italy. He has said that Cagliari will likely be the last club he coaches.
“It’s very romantic – and I understand the whole country being behind them.”
Arsene Wenger
The rest of the key Leicester players fell off into obscurity or retired in the years following the title run. The lack of individual success at the highest levels after winning the Premier League makes the run they had that much more of an amazing underdog story.
Where is Leicester now?
The following season, Leicester finished 12th in the Premier League and Ranieri was let go halfway through the campaign when the team was only one point above the relegation zone. The team lost in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. Over the next few years, Leicester finished in the middle of the table with their best finish being fifth. In the 2022-23 season, they finished 18th and were relegated. They currently sit atop the Championship (one league below the Premier League) as they hope to make a return to the top flight in England.
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