Leicester City have won the Premier League title after Tottenham Hotspur failed to beat Chelsea on Monday night. The Foxes become the first club since Nottingham Forest in 1977-78 to win the English top-flight league title for the first time, having only once before — in 1928-29 — finished as runners-up. After Leicester drew 1-1 with Manchester United at the weekend, Tottenham were left needing to beat the Blues to keep the title race alive, but Claudio Ranieri’s men are now an unassailable seven points clear of their rivals with two games left to play after the 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge. It marks an incredible rise for the club who were facing relegation last season — and spent 140 days from November 2014 to April 2015 at the bottom of the Premier League table — before a run of seven wins in their last nine games under Nigel Pearson kept them up. They eventually finished in 14th place.
I suspect there will be a large number of very seriously hung over people in Leicester tomorrow morning…and they’re well deserving ever ounce of celebration they can squeeze from what is quite likely the most unlikely championship in sports history. Leicester City FC (LCFC) was at the outset of the 2015-16 Barclays Premier League (BPL) season a 5000-1 longshot. For a little perspective, you’d have have a better shot of finding yourself naked in a hot tub with the Norwegian beach volleyball team or getting palm trees to grow at the North Pole. No team in any sport has ever sniffed a championship at 5000-1 odds. These things just don’t happen…until today.
LCFC is only the sixth team to win the BPL- in fact, only four clubs (Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, and Arsenal) have combined to win 21 of the league’s 23 championships. English soccer has historically always been a battle of the haves and have-nots- four or five clubs with deep pockets and 15 or 16 who exist because the wealthy clubs have to beat up on someone. LCFC is anything but soccer royalty, which is part of what makes this such a good story.
Party on, Leicester. You (and your team) deserve your moment in the sun…or under the table.
