After 28 years as a manager with a distinguished reputation but who always seemed to miss out on the biggest prizes, Ranieri smiled: “Look, in my mind, I always believed I have to win a title”.
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“The players, the heart, the soul and how they play”, he said when asked the secret of the season.
Some faithful Leicester fans, including Leigh Herbert, made small fortunes thanks to their team’s unlikely success. The U.S. team built of 12 Minnesotans and coached by Herb Brooks had 1,000-to-1 odds of beating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics, but won 4-3.
Leicester this week became just the sixth club to win the Premier League after Manchester United, Blackburn, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City and Blackburn.
Leicester City has won the Barclays Premier League championship.
Flares were lit, chants of “Leicester till I die” rang out, and men selling Champions flags were doing a swift trade.
Among those in the crowd was Stuart Hamilton, 68, who stayed out until 2am.
The goalkeeper has three years left on his current contract at Chelsea, but admitted in March he is unsure whether he will remain at the club next season with Real Madrid and, more recently, PSG reported to be interested in the 23-year-old’s services.
Leicester City’s Shinji Okazaki arrives at Belvoir Drive Training Ground, Leicester, England Tue …
His squad gathered to watch the game at the home of striker Jamie Vardy, named Footballer of the Year earlier on Monday, and video phone footage posted by defender Christian Fuchs showed them exploding with joy at the final whistle.
“It was only then that I thought, ‘I’ve done it!'”.
Many people will focus on the human stories of this team, its players, its effect on the city they play in. Me? It was fantastic. Now I will come back in the same way.
“The boys were standing on furniture – I hope Vards’ house is all right, ” Morgan said.
Gagandeep Bola, 19, said: “We were 5000/1 and we’ve done it. Incredible”.
Many newspapers referred to the fact that before the team’s ascent, bookmakers had, at one time, offered to pay out £5 000 for every £1 bet that Leicester would win the title. They will all surely never get exhausted of having to pose with “Champions” banners and sing “Champione”.
If you’re the average American sports fan on Twitter, the words “Leicester City” are probably just some debris that have found their way onto your Twitter timeline here and there in the last couple weeks, mostly as a result of retweets from friends or media members who follow soccer. “Then maybe you can go anywhere”.
That’s the inscrutable Mr. Raneri again, raising the question: If he doesn’t know how this happened, what are we poor sods supposed to make of it?
I’m a very unusual man. Maybe Saturday I can cry, I don’t know.
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To ensure this season isn’t a one-off taste of glory at the highest level, Leicester will have to protect stars from 22-goal Vardy to winger Rayed Mahrez from the grasps of wealthier clubs.
