Sometimes you have to rethink everything you thought constant about the universe.
What Leicester City are doing this season goes against the laws of physics alright but it’s also beyond even the wildest of fairytales.
Forget your principles, forget your limitations and forget your Roy of the Rovers and whatever else, this isn’t one big joke anymore. This is serious and it is a direct threat to the buffer we thought we had so clearly established between real life and the supernatural.
Nigel Pearson was guest on Fletch and Sav – God love him – on Sunday and they asked him just what the hell is going on. They asked him what he said to the team last season to get them rallying when all hope looked lost at the bottom of the table – Leicester were just one point better off at this stage last year than Aston Villa are now.
The former City boss told the BT Sport presenters to not make the mistake of assuming that one man said something to spark an apparently non-stop revival. He said it came from all over the club, it came from the players and it came from something that they’re not given much credit for, even now: talent.
He used the word momentum. He talked about how close the team were as a group but that spirit and ability will each, individually, only take you so far. Leicester have both.
The question is: how the hell do they? Where did it come from? How did a group of players seemingly rendered dispensable elsewhere and tossed on the scrapheap come together to change the way we look the game, the world. How did they come together to create magic?
That team that thumped Manchester City on Saturday, it cost £20m less than what Eliaquim Mangala cost Manchester City.
The 11 that humbled the best side in England, they did so not just because they deserved to, but because they were actually better than them.
And, still, it isn’t possible to explain how.
Kasper Schmeichel: Dropped to the fourth tier to join Notts County after Manchester City signed Joe Hart.
Danny Simpson: Another Manchester reject who was struggling to see past Ritchie De Laet for a while.
Wes Morgan: Finally made it to the Premier League after toiling with Nottingham Forest for 10 years.
Robert Huth: Fell out of favour at Stoke behind Marc Wilson and was forced to find loan asylum last winter.
Christian Fuchs: Decent signing that came at a cost-effective £0m.
Riyad Mahrez: Lying around France before he was snapped up for even cheaper than Peter Schmeichel. Nearly as good a find too.
Danny Drinkwater: Finally, after four years, Manchester United gave up on him after giving him no chances across a total of zero appearances.
N’Golo Kante: Great signing.
Marc Albrighton: Flogged from Aston Villa because he just couldn’t break into the team. Aston Villa.
Shinji Okazaki: Tries his heart out. But don’t we all?
Jamie Vardy: Playing non-league football four years ago. At the age of 25.
And here we are. Five points clear at the top of the Premier League with 13 games to go. Two losses all season. The top scorers in the division.
It isn’t a fluke but it certainly isn’t understandable either.
Claudio Ranieri has come in – washed-up from the ruins he left behind him in Greece – and he has a group of footballers, most of whom were long since given up on, and he has them steamrolling the most competitive league in the world.
And all they’re doing is keeping it simple. They see space, they slide the ball into it. They see space, and they run into it like hounds. They play tight, narrow, with passion and that momentum that Pearson left behind and then it’s just a simple case of letting Vardy run, getting the opposition back-tracking, pushing them deeper until they wilt.
Nothing stupid, nothing risky. Leave that for Mahrez. The rest is just simple. It’s the most reduced form of football we’ve seen in a long time. The most effective. If there’s a channel, hit it. Either with the ball or with your body. Don’t get caught in possession, move it on. Hit it on. You look at it and think you could nearly play on that team yourself.
Hey, a group of what were once called misfits are doing it.
And those same players are tearing down the walls between the elite and the rest – the walls that we all thought modern day money had erected whilst ruining the game for us.
Leicester City have made this game about football again.
11 men against 11 men.
That’s all it is.
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