Leicester City Football Club has played like a champion ever since the city it represents gave a long-dead monarch a burial fit for a king.
Exactly one year ago Monday, Leicester City lost to Tottenham 4-3 in a Premier League game. Relegation to the Championship (England’s second division) appeared to be a certainty for the Foxes, but something strange started happening as soon as four days later: England’s King Richard III was re-buried at Leicester’s Anglican Cathedral, and the Foxes started winning.
Researchers and archaeologists from the University of Leicester discovered skeletal remains underneath a parking lot in Leicester in August 2012. Leicester City finished sixth in the Championship that season and failed to achieve promotion to the Premier League.
Tests confirmed in September 2013 that the remains belonged to King Richard III, who was killed in battle at age 32 in 1485. His death and nondescript burial effectively ended the War of the Roses, after which Henry Tudor assumed the throne and reigned as King Henry VII.
Leicester City earned promotion in 2013-14, winning the Championship title by some distance over the competing back.
Fast forward to March 25, 2015, the date of Richard III’s second funeral.
Leicester City engineered a great escape from relegation in 2014-15, winning seven out of its last nine games and finishing 14th in the Premier League standings. The Foxes carried that form into the 2015-16 campaign and now are closing in on this season’s Premier League title. A league championship would be the first in their 132-year history and among the most unexpected triumphs in the annals of team sports worldwide.
In 40 Premier League games since the day of Richard III’s reinterment, Leicester City has won 26, drawn 10 and lost just four. The Foxes’ average of 2.2 points per game would give it 83.6 points over 38 games. That total would be lower than 14 of the 22 previous Premier League champions, but three of those sides hit their marks in a 42-game season. Regardless of one’s perspective, Leicester City has looked like champion material for the last calendar year.
The Foxes’ form has endured through bumps that might have derailed most other teams’ pursuits of success. There was the racist orgy scandal that blew up in May in Thailand. Nigel Pearson’s son was involved in the shameful antics, and Leicester City fired the popular manager one month later.
Jamie Vardy, perhaps the player who best epitomizes Leicester City’s rags-to-riches rise, was caught on video in July aiming racial slurs at a fellow casino gambler, who is Japanese. Vardy powered Leicester City with a record-setting goal-scoring streak earlier this season, and his partnership with Japanese forward Shinji Okazaki is a key driver in the Foxes’ seemingly impossible dream.
Soccer experts credit Claudio Ranieri, Pearson’s replacement, for masterminding Leicester City’s pursuit of success. The pact he made with his players during preseason might be the subject of a new chapter in coaching manuals in both England and Italy.
But Ranieri’s methods don’t fully explain Leicester City’s remarkable rise. Scribes and pundits could do worse than to look at the discovery and re-internment of Richard III’s remains as a turning point in Leicester City’s, the Premier League’s and English soccer’s history.
That too, would give new meaning to the phrase “King Power” — the same one that adorns Leicester City’s jerseys, stadium and collective spirit.
Thumbnail photo via Frank Augstein/Associated Press
