Watch out Barcelona, Vardy is Havin’ a Party!
The Legendary Foxes of Leicester City are the 2015/2016 British Premier League Champions!
I’ve been following the Premier League year after year for some time now and can easily say this has been the most exciting season I have yet to witness. Sergio Aguero’s 93rd minute goal to win Manchester City’s 1st title in 2012 was of epic proportions, but that was just a single moment. The Foxes' pursuit of the title carried the excitement week after week. When Leicester finally clinched the title with two matches left, I thought to myself, I will never see a season like this occur again. However, while I let the small town's glory sink in, I watched El Cholo Simeone's Atletico Madrid convincingly knock Pep Guardiola's Bayern Munich and Luis Enrique's "Barca" out of the Champions League and realized that Claudio Ranieri’s men may have sparked a revolution! Sure, Cinderella stories have come and gone, but not like this.
Getting up at 5 A.M to watch the BPL live on the West Coast is brutal, but this team’s charisma, chemistry, and hunger were rare enough to have my eyes glued to the screen at dawn every weekend. Riyad Mahrez, the unknown magician, dazzled everyone with his silky left foot, megging defenders and assisting dimes to his forwards match after match. Not to mention the 17 goals he bagged himself! Then there is Jamie Vardy who came out of nowhere. The guy made lightning runs out of thin air all season and scored goals for fun, tormenting defenses in the process. The banger against Liverpool was world-class! The fact that he played his 1st professional game at age 25 and got called up for the England squad at age 28 gives hope to all of us “aging” players in our 20’s. The instrumental midfield duo who were once Aston Villa and Manchester United rejects, Marc Albrighton and Danny Drinkwater (AKA Drinkchampagne), constantly picked up their heads deep in their own end looking for Vardy and caused some scintillating breakaways. Christian Fuchs, the free transfer, has a left foot that makes the Man City sheikhs question Aleksander Kolarov’s $12 million valuation. Robert Huth and Wes Morgan, the two slow and aging center-backs (which is not the most ideal pair of characteristics for both of your center-backs to have in such a league), tightened up the defense very impressively with their menacing aerial play. N’golo Kante, the diamond in the rough, ran marathons in the middle of the pitch and was the crux of their counter-attack play, constantly cutting possession from the high possessing teams that every defender dreads playing against. Shinji Okazaki, the awkward Japanese transfer, provided subtle, yet necessary, support for Vardy and had a bicycle kick goal of his own that was shockingly coordinated and brilliant. The Man City reject and son of the great Peter Schmeicel, who spent most of his seasons in the lower divisions, Kasper Schmeicel, had the 2nd most shutouts in the league. And let’s not forget, Leo Ulloa, the most expensive signing bought for a whopping $11 million from Brighton, who came in as a substitute in almost every game and scored some crucial and heroic winners. With such an eclectic roster of rejects and no-names managed by Claudio Ranieri, who had never won a top-flight league title with any team, no one would have SERIOUSLY considered, at the beginning of the season, that the Foxes would end up lifting the BPL trophy. No one. In fact, the majority of pundits all over the media had them coming in at dead last (which is one of the reasons why pundits bother me and I think their opinions, especially all ESPN Soccer pundits, are a complete waste of breath; but I digress).
Pundits aside and ignored, Claudio Ranieri was grateful of the opportunity provided by the Thai executives in command and knew that he had to make something special of the cards he was dealt. He knew that names alone could not be a driving force to any sort of success and knew that he had to build success by molding a team around the teams’ individual traits. Ranieri told his men in the beginning of the season, “I want you to play for your team-mates. We are a little team, so we have to fight with all our heart, with all our soul. I don’t care the name of the opponent. All I want is for you to fight. If they are better than us, Okay, congratulations. But they have to show us they are better.” Clearly, this injected a belief that created a certain team chemistry unlike any other I have ever witnessed. Week after week, they defeated giants with grace and stayed humble, making them the ultimate underdog to root for.
Action Images via Reuters / Carl Recine
Chemistry and humility was, without a doubt, a driving force in their title-winning surge, but there had to have been other factors at play here. Could it have been the fact that the “Tinkerman” only played 18 players the entire season, of which 8 of the players were in the starting XI over 30 times? Talk about chemistry in a starting group. Or could it have been Ranieri’s light practice style that demanded all players have two days of rest at a minimum per week? Or was it the fact that they did not participate in an international cup competition? Or could it even have been the humbling “jinx-proofed” press conferences that the love-able Ranieri would give after every 3 points? My superstitious self wants to believe that that was the underlying factor. More realistically, could it have been their nearly-perfect counter attacking style? Troy Deeney, striker of Watford, analyzed their style, saying that they seemed to funnel their opponent’s attack to the flanks, and allowed crosses instead of preventing them, which were met and dealt with by Huth and Morgan, which would then be recovered quickly by Kante and Drinkwater, and and then distributed to the feet of Vardy and Mahrez, who we all have to come realize are one of the most dangerous duo’s to lead a counter attack. He concluded his analysis by stating, “Leicester are the kind of team that want you to get a little bit confident when you come forward, thinking you are on top. Then, when you commit men forward and are getting excited because you are having all these crosses and think the momentum is with you, that is when they pounce.” It really doesn’t get more “textbook” than that.
No one will know exactly why or how they pulled it off, and who knows if it will ever happen again. But I do know that the Foxes have shrewdly out-foxed the “tiki-taka” playing style that the footy world has come to admire at a time where it was considered unthinkable. They have proven that big names and ridiculous transfer fees mean absolutely nothing. Manchester United bought Anthony Martial for a fee of $50 million, which is about the exact value of the entire Leicester City team! The BPL teams with these big names and "tiki-taka" playing style completely underestimated Ranieri's men throughout the season and failed to reinvent themselves when playing against them, constantly getting caught flat-footed and picking up the ball from the back of the net. Next year, the Foxes will be put to the test playing against the top clubs from all over Europe in the UEFA Champions League. Barcelona, Real Madrid, PSG, Bayern Munich. Can you imagine watching Leicester City vs. Barcelona at the Camp Nou? If that happens, one thing is for sure; it will be Goliath finding a way to defeat David.
