BLOG FLAVIO RAMALHO
Leicester's fearless Foxes have rebooted football in this country for the next DECADE with Premier League title pursuit
FORGET ARSENAL'S TIKI-TAKA, STAN COLLYMORE BELIEVES THIS SQUAD OF 14 OR 15 HEROES HAVE CHANGED ENGLISH FOOTBALL'S LANDSCAPE
Claudio Ranieri, Riyad Mahrez and Leicester are on top after a quite incredible campaign
Manchester United have had some difficulty filling the 76,000-odd seats at Old Trafford in recent weeks but there won’t be a spare vantage point inside the Theatre of Dreams this afternoon .
And for arguably the first time ever the chants of ‘You’ve only come to see the Leicester’ which are sure to reverberate around the away end will be completely justified.
What a celebration it will be for those fearless Foxes if they do clinch the title by beating Louis van Gaal’s men at a stadium used to witnessing such achievements.
I still don’t think Leicester’s success will match what Nottingham Forest did under Brian Clough all those years ago, when they won the First Division title and two European Cups.
Not yet, anyway.
But it will certainly be the greatest football achievement in Premier League history, surpassing Blackburn’s feat of lifting the top-flight trophy in 1994-95. Should they do it at Old Trafford it will be an incredible day for everyone with Leicester in their blood, although there are a few people for whom I will be especially delighted.
Dave Rennie, the physio who got me back on the pitch in six weeks after I broke my leg while I was a Leicester player, springs to mind, as does Rachel Cluley, who works in the offices and was always there at the club’s Belvoir Drive training complex to welcome us in the morning.
Dear old Dolly the tea lady, and Andrew Neville, Leicester’s football operations director, were also great to me during my time at the club.
It’s even more personal with Marc Albrighton, who came on my Call Collymore show on talkSPORT a couple of years ago saying he was going to leave Aston Villa, the club he and I have supported since we were boys. He looked like he might be heading for football’s wilderness, but after journeying just a few miles along the M6 and M69 he has found football utopia and is going to end up with a Premier League winners’ medal in his pocket.
Assistant manager Craig Shakespeare was a pro when I was at Walsall and went on to Sheffield Wednesday, which was as good as it got for him in his playing career, but he has been around the Midlands for ages and I’m so pleased for him. I will be going for a beer to celebrate when the title is in the bag with goalkeeping coach Mike Stowell, who was Wolves keeper back in the day. Macca the kit man is another great character, even if he used to go berserk at me for cutting the bottoms off my socks so I could tape them on to my normal socks.
There are so many people in and around the club with Leicester City at heart, people who deserve what has happened this season. Over the years their hearts have been broken, most notably in 2002 when the club went into administration with debts of £30million.
A lot of them didn’t know if they were going to have jobs any more.
But they rode out the storm and 14 years on they’re on the brink of witnessing their club going on an open-top parade to celebrate being Kings of England.
Whether or not they can win the title at United today remains to be seen but if they go and put on the kind of show they have put on several times this season, most notably against Manchester City, they will put the seal on the most entertaining football season in years.
Possession
Average stats for all PL Champions since 2006
They could parade the trophy after the home game against Everton on Saturday then receive a guard of honour at Stamford Bridge from last season’s champions the following weekend, a fitting tribute to the 14 or 15 heroes who have done the business on the pitch.
They may not have the most ability in the world but in this country of ours, where it’s about rolling your sleeves up, showing grit and determination, all those things people show in their day-to-day lives, they have done just that on football pitches up and down the land.
We shouldn’t pretend the car park at the King Power is packed with Trabants and Morris Minors, but they are still a down-to-earth bunch whose honesty chimes with the British public.
They are 14 or 15 men who have absolute belief in each other and a togetherness a lot of clubs can only dream of.
They have shown Arsenal, as if their fans needed showing, that talent alone and the ability to play tiki-taka football is no guarantee of success.
Displaying these very British traits in their game, they have rebooted and recalibrated football in this country for at least the decade to come.
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