Sport

The Rise and Fall of Leicester City

Leicester City are the most captivating football club in England, for better and worse.

Since 2009, the Foxes, who had been Premier League regulars before that, gained promotion from League One up to the top flight, won the most incredible title as 5000-1 outsiders, played in the Champions League, won the FA Cup, got relegated and promoted from the Championship and then relegated all the way to League One again.

In the last 17 years, they have both been a model club, and an example of how quickly things can go badly wrong.

A lot has been made of how football is stacked in the favour of a few elite clubs. Leicester are seen as the greatest ever example of how to buck the trend, but the reality of maintaining that over a long period has been made clear.

Their relegation this season has come in no small part because of a points deduction due to financial problems, which have been more and more prevalent in recent seasons, but also a rotten core within the club.

In Wednesday night’s draw with Hull, the game which ultimately sealed their fate, every player who started had Premier League experience. Patson Daka, their starting striker, was a £22m signing when he joined the club in 2021.

While their fall from grace in that time has impacted the quality of their squad, there is no excuse for them to be in the position they are. Similarly to when they were relegated from the Premier League in 2023, just two years on from their FA Cup win and a second successive fifth-placed finish, the players simply haven’t done enough to justify their reputations.

With the likes of James Maddison, Harvey Barnes, Youri Tielemans, all of whom played critical roles in the success under former manager Brendan Rodgers, in that side, there was a club-wide sense that they would simply be fine that season. Despite finding themselves in a similar situation this year, it happened again. They simply have not learned any lessons.

Not every factor in their difficulty is their own doing, and one particularly tragic moment in 2018 cannot be understated. Their owner, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, died when his helicopter crashed outside the King Power Stadium, leaving the club in the hands of his son. During the pandemic, their primary business, Thailand’s leading duty free retailer, was heavily impacted by the lack of flights, and the knock-on effect was seismic.

Fundamentally, the club’s approach ceased to be what was needed. After winning the Premier League in 2016 with a squad mostly made up of players who had gained promotion two years earlier. N’Golo Kante was an obviously crucial addition, and players like Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy had stepped up beyond expectation and maintained that level beyond that season. But that achievement came from inner belief, togetherness and hard work; traits that simply have not been evident enough for too long.

Once Claudio Ranieri departed the club and Rodgers eventually arrived, the quality of players across the board had improved. Leicester were recruiting exciting players with promise and developing them, either to help the club succeed, bring in a profit or both. Examples include Maddison, Tielemans, Harry Maguire and Wesley Fofana. Building a state of the art training ground felt necessary when it happened; knowing it will now house League One players only further accentuates the difficulties the club has faced.

That sort of approach to player trading is really the only way to bridge the gap to the elite. Others, like Brighton and Bournemouth, have taken it on with success, but the important thing is the players coming in have to consistently be able to grow into better players than those who are leaving. That simply has not happened for some time at Leicester.

Fan unrest, financial difficulties and questionable attitudes from the squad are all the hallmarks of a club in crisis. What is so rare about Leicester, though, is that the same set up made them a force. There is no quick fix to this, but it is just the latest chapter in English football’s most captivating story of the 21st century.