An Inexplicable Explanation

It’s July 2011. The summer after I had returned from four months of travelling in The Americas, aged 22, I’m unsure of my next steps but certain they won’t be nearly as adventurous as those taken during the preceding four months. I create a list.

To this day, on my computer, resides that list. Titled ’50 things to do before I die’ - and probably an attempt to reassure myself that I wasn’t about to embark to on a monotonous grind until retirement - I remember little about what prompted me to put that list together but vividly actually doing so.

I never made it to 50 things and to this day the list stands untouched at 29. Somewhere amongst the 29 reads ‘see Leicester City win the FA Cup’. Some things have been accomplished, others retain that aspect of ‘to do’ about them. Including that elusive FA Cup.

With fresh perspective, that FA Cup doesn’t seem so important right now. Because on Sunday afternoon Leicester City have the chance to win The Premier League at Old Trafford in a tale that for me - and almost every other Leicester City fan - seemed so wildly incomprehensible that it was never even close to contemplation. Let alone bucket lists.

The clichés have been done to death. A fairytale, a great story, a miracle. But with any tale there’s a structure. A rhyme and reason. An element of expectation, good or bad.

Nobody saw this coming.

Being a Leicester City fan hasn’t always been easy. Put together a list of things that can happen to a football club and Leicester City have been through most in the last 20 years; promotions, relegations, administration, a ground move, cup wins, takeovers, La Manga sex scandals, play-off heartbreaks, the greatest of great escapes and a string of managers.

Boring it certainly is not.

This is not intended to be a sob story. More an explanation of why an explanation does not come easy. Because in the past few weeks and months people have asked me about what could be about to happen (the pessimist in me still can’t bring myself to say it will) and often I’ve not entertained the question. I’ll shake my head in disbelief and say ‘crazy’ or puff my cheeks and exclaim ‘insane’. I do this because this has a meaning rooted far deeper than something I’m able to encapsulate amidst small talk.

I’ve followed Leicester City since 1997. If I added up the money I have spent on doing so it would probably be the biggest expenditure in my life alongside food and drink. If I added up the time that I have spent watching Leicester it would probably equate to more than that which I have spent in the company of people I consider good friends. If I could summon up the energy I have put into watching Leicester City over the years into one collective effort then I single-handedly could achieve something unknown to man.

The truth is that Leicester City is part of my identity. Following them has taken me to the deepest darkest corners of England but simultaneously to the top of the world.

I will never forget walking away from Vicarage Road after that Deeney moment as ‘Yellow’ by Colplay blared out over the tannoy and Watford fans celebrated on the pitch – I barely spoke on the journey home. Standing in disbelief in Stoke as time ebbed away and relegation to the lowest point in the club’s entire history was confirmed. Just knowing, as Kermorgant stepped up on a cold Tuesday play-off semi-final night in Cardiff, that another entry on the list – seeing Leicester play at the new Wembley – would have to wait a little longer. Filling out a membership form to join a Supporters’ Trust in order to try and help save the club from extinction and dropping coins in a bucket to the same effect. Weaving through hordes of taunting Wolves supporters having just lost a crucial relegation six-pointer where we were 3-0 up at half time only to go on to lose 4-3. Manchester United fans counting down the time that we had left in The Premier League as the minutes on the old scoreboard at Filbert Street ticked by and (what we thought were) our halcyon days were ending. The numerous days or evenings where I sat in a car for hours on end only to see guys who were paid more in a month than I earn in a year fail to show even a hint of caring half as much as I did.

They say that the bad times make the good ones better but you don’t embark on a lifetime supporting Leicester City in expectation of the reward of those good times. The victory and the glory is only ever secondary.

It’s mad, but Leicester City can change my mood. They can ruin an otherwise good day and brighten an otherwise sullen one. People who do not follow a football team often fail to understand that hold football has on people. Challenge them to spend so much time and effort on something and they’ll find it impossible not to care too. I’ve tried, in times of footballing despair, to vow that I’ll never again care about it so much.

But then it gets me. Years pass and once more; knots in the stomach, a shaking hand, a resting heart beat anything but restful. Leicester City can affect me physically.

Why? Because Leicester is my city. This is my cause. Football is not a matter of life and death but by the very same measure it’s more than just a game. Football clubs are rooted in communities, passed through bloodlines and markers in otherwise ordinary lives. I wouldn’t change any of those moments because, throughout it all, the one constant in every time good or bad? People who feel exactly the same, stood next to me sharing in it all. My dad, stood next to me sharing in it all.

Leicester City stand on the brink of sporting greatness. They could be about to achieve something that will see me die a happy Leicester City fan at a stage of life where I hope I have decades more to live. If we win The Premier League, what happens from here matters not. Those who do not support Leicester City are misguided with the misconception that a return to what we know as normality is the worst that it can get.

The Twitter war of words, the ‘banter’, the pundits. Everyone wants a piece of this Leicester City story. In a world where hashtags are used to quickly summarise meaning of something, for this story there are none that fit. This is a story with a global appeal, but it is not one with global meaning.

As Leicester City fans, this is our experience and attached to it is our meaning. It’s the dream that they never would have marketed to us because no Leicester City fan would ever have bought it. It’s real and it’s magical. But not for the 35 games that have gone before, for the lifetimes that have gone before.

We say we’re Leicester til we die. Make us immortal, lads.