BEYOND THE FIELD. Keeping the faith

On these very pages, in August last year, I had predicted a closely fought, potentially thrilling race to this season’s English Premier League title. The defending champions, Chelsea, I proclaimed, under the doughty genius of Jose Mourinho, were favourites, but only just. Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United had, after all, each made considerable improvements to their respective squads of players, and were surely capable of mounting a serious title challenge.

My faith in this prediction might have had an alarming element of conviction about it. But the old adage of sport’s glorious uncertainties is usually inapplicable to football in England, at least in that there is a prosaic regularity to the nature of the league’s challengers. Yet this confidence in my prediction, and indeed that of many pundits of the game, far more knowledgeable than I, couldn’t have been any more misplaced.

Chelsea, who sacked Mourinho in December last year, are floundering in the middle of the table. Manchester United’s football has been routinely uninspiring, and any hint of a title challenge from them died as early as a few weeks into the season. Manchester City have flattered on occasion, but have been far too inconsistent. And Arsenal have been Arsenal, threatening to win the league only to fall apart at the business end.

Leaving all these clubs in the wake, though, perched majestically at the top of the league, and poised to claim their first title in their storied yet unadorned history, with just three games left in the season, are the ridiculously unfancied Leicester City. The only team capable of surmounting Leicester, Tottenham Hotspur, are seven points behind, in second place. All Leicester need now is a win in any one of their three remaining games. And were this to happen, Leicester’s conquest would unquestionably go down in the annals of football as one of the greatest underdog triumphs; they would certainly be the most improbable winners since tiny Ipswich Town won the league in 1962. Even if Spurs somehow pull a rabbit out of the hat, Leicester’s story would still remain remarkable, and would resonate for years to come. Such has been the outrageous implausibility of their run.

The heroes at the heart of this impending Leicester triumph are manifold. One of the phenomenal aspects of their feat is marked by the absence in their squad, at the beginning of the season, of a single marquee player, a player that a top European club might have at the time yearned for. Indeed the squad comprised a rather motley crew, from journeymen players to former youth prodigies that had moved to pastures new and low in search of first team football, to players who had risen slowly up the ranks from the lower echelons, to mostly unknown continental players who were apparently too light-weight for the hurly-burly Premier League.

The squad’s composition looked so dire that 10 out of 11 Guardian journalists quizzed before the season began predicted that Leicester were certainties for relegation. The air of inevitability about a demotion was only accentuated when Claudio Ranieri was announced as their new manager. In his most recent job, with the Greece national football team, the Italian had been sacked after just four games in charge, which included a loss to lowly Faroe Islands. Gary Lineker, the former England and Leicester great, branded the decision to appoint Ranieri as “uninspiring”.

So, what, one might wonder, has been the key to this Leicester triumph? Although it’s been described thus in certain quarters, their feat is neither a consequence of mere fortune, nor is it a freak accident. It has rather been the effect of a syncretic amalgam between players, scouted and selected superbly, who have proved themselves to be far better than envisaged, and a manager who has been quietly impressive, changing not too much, but yet infusing in the team, in his own words, the “Italian tactical way”.

Consider Leicester’s most influential players, each of whose rises has been astonishing, and each of whom was identified and signed by Leicester’s head of recruitment Steve Walsh. Barely four years ago, Jamie Vardy, now the club’s leading marksman, was playing for Fleetwood Town, a team in the effective fifth division of English football. N’Golo Kante, who was snapped up for €8 million last summer from French side Caen, was virtually unknown amongst fans in England. But his performances in midfield for Leicester have showcased a pedigree of some renown.

The jewel in the crown, though, has been Riyad Mahrez, a player blessed with the most silken touch and balance. An Algerian, he was signed in the summer of 2013 for a paltry sum of £750,000. At the time, there were many doubts over whether Mahrez, who is slight of frame, could cut it in the Premier League. Yet, three seasons in, he now stands at the very apex of the game, having been declared as the Professional Football Association’s Player of the Year.

Mahrez’s story, much like the larger Leicester City story, has a great dash of romance about it. As fans of football, we live today in a world where spending power often acts as a sole trump. But Leicester City and Mahrez have shown us that there is still place in sport for the unpredictable. Their dizzying ascent gives us hope for a beautiful future, one where perhaps football, too, can occasionally be the true victor.

Suhrith Parthasarathy is a Chennai-based lawyer and writer; @suhrith

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