Amid talk of a bumper
new deal – bumper in the sense that it will bump him towards a salary package
that truly reflects the remarkable value he’s brought to his team this season -
Jamie Vardy had just crashed in a memorable goal to give Leicester City a lead
over Liverpool. It was the kind of goal that television cameras can always
document but never detail. The kind of goal that is a justification, an
explanation, of why - in an era of free internet streams and Sky Sports - people
still pay inflated admission fees to watch live football. The explosion in that
stadium was every bit as majestic as the strike itself.
And then the aftermath.
An almost stunned silence. Sweet and true as it left his boot and sailed over
Simon Mignolet’s head, that ball was not the only thing sinking in that night.
A wave around the
stadium. To call it a ripple would not do it justice. “We’re Leicester City,
we’re top of the league”. Swathed in originality for Leicester fans despite
being sung to the tune of ‘Sloop John B’ as pretty much every football chant
seems to be these days, this was more than just a song. It was recognition. It
was 30,000 Leicester City fans - for perhaps the first time - realising that we
have a chance.
Whilst it may be just a
chance, outside of Leicester they’ll try to now claim that they always said we
had a chance. The truth is that they’ve bumbled their way through 30 seconds of
token Leicester City chat when theorising Van Gaal’s catastrophe and Chelsea’s
capitulation, they only started to talk about N’Golo Kante two months after he
was stealing more possessions than the Hatton Garden raiders and Riyad Mahrez
has been robbed of Player of the Month on two occasions now. Despite 69 points
in their last 32 league games, eyes have not been on Leicester City.
It irks me. It irks me
to hear them talk of bubbles bursting, a ‘run’ and the same tired old
wonderment being trotted out week-by-week at what is happening down at Filbert
Way without being able to explain why it is so. They’d have you think it’s all
inexplicable, a lucky streak.
It’s not.
What you see happening at Leicester City right now is far
more than a plucky band of brothers in superhuman form (save for a Christmas
party in Copenhagen). In an era when people talk about philosophies and big
money signings, Leicester City fly in the face of it all.
Why? Because Leicester City have afforded themselves
something that no other club seems to have these days: time.
This is a journey that started on Sunday 4th May
2008 when, as Stoke City ascended to The Premier League for the first time in
their history, Leicester City descended to the lowest point in theirs: the
third tier of English football. Dark days. But that lowest ebb served as a catalyst
for a re-building job that, via play-off heartbreak and a spell as Sven’s
latest fling, addressed a discord between fans and players.
Every team in this league is a club but not every club in
this league is a team. From top to bottom, Leicester City presents a united
front and King Power Stadium has become a fortress. Leicester City fans are
familiar with an “all is not lost, yet” mentality, a gallows humour and unity
in difficult times. When you’ve dropped coins in a bucket outside the ground
pre-match to save your club how could you not be?
Starting when the team needed the greatest of great
escapes, for the past 12 months the atmosphere inside ‘The KP’ has been
electric. The players feed off it, thrive on it.
Opposition teams have crumbled. When you’ve flown the 80 miles
to save a ‘long’ trip on your luxury coach, walked into the ground with your
designer headphones blaring and then an hour later are greeted with a
thunderous noise that renders communication with your team mates nigh on
impossible - and Jamie Vardy’s tearing after you - it must be hard not to. In
place of ‘high press’, Leicester City do ‘hard press’.
Speaking of Vardy, ‘that’ goal is a culmination too. A
culmination of a player plucked from the depths of non-league being given time.
Jamie Vardy is as good as Jamie Vardy believes he is and the only opponent who
can undermine his endeavour and determination sits in the centre of his mind,
not of the opposition’s defence. It took time for him to realise what he could
do in The Championship, time again in The Premier League and now time to believe
that he is an England player. The confidence to take that shot on screamed of a
man who is utterly convinced that he is as record-breakingly unstoppable as he
can be.
A lot has been said about Leicester’s scouting department
and the spotlight has arrived there via their greatest find, Riyad Mahrez.
There’s no doubt that Mahrez has dazzled and he is undoubtedly the jewel in the
crown but he has been building up to this level - gradual elevation not
revelation. The only thing that should scare other teams is that he still has
another couple of levels in him. The re-assuring thing for him should be that
Leicester will afford him that time to find them.
They dubbed him ‘The Tinkerman’ but the only tinkering
Claudio Ranieri has done is to tighten a defence that could often undermine the
good work Leicester City did going forward. They now, with ease, see out games
which last season went down to the wire. Even at their lowest point last season
Leicester City were in every match they played and so it transpires that by
addressing defensive frailties they can now win or draw games that they were
marginally losing 12 months ago. Weak links last season in Wes Morgan and Danny
Simpson have been men transformed this one.
It all adds up. It all culminates in a season beyond our
wildest expectations but don’t let them have you believe it’s a miraculous
flash in the pan or that the dream will end soon.
The dream cannot end because, little do they realise, as
30,000 rose to their feet to belt out that declaration that we were top of the
league the dream had already ended. There’s a difference between dreaming and
believing. We’ve all dreamt of an FA Cup, of Ranieri taking us to Europe and
those more wildly optimistic amongst us of being champions of England. None of
us ever believed it could happen.
We do now.
Over the next 14 matches there will be talk of losing
something. Losing a chance, losing a lead, losing an opportunity. These are the
kind of pressures that come with expectation so, by their very nature, for us
they do not apply. There is no expectation. In a club that has experienced more
in the last 20 years than some clubs do in a lifetime how could there possibly
be?
But there is something that at times seemed lost within
that period: hope. And with it comes that devilish little thought - again unspoken
as in the moments after Vardy’s stunner - what if?
