Marc Albrighton, a player thought not good enough by the mighty Aston Villa, since relegated of course, wrote his name in history with Leicester’s first Champions League goal but it was those twin rapiers Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy that did the lasting damage. We played our style.
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Awful Brugge never looked like recovering from Albrighton’s opener but they blew their best chance before the winger netted when Jose Izquierdo shot wide when clean through.
The 26-year-old has been transformed from a frog to a Premier League prince at Leicester thanks to boss Ranieri’s belief in him.
His target, he said, is to stay in Europe and even if Leicester slip into the Europa League, it would still be considered a success.
Ranieri revealed later that he had wanted Islam Slimani to take the spot-kick but Mahrez chose to shoulder the responsibility.
“Maybe the music wake up him”.
“Maybe they think we will tire in the last 15 minutes but I don’t believe that”, he said.
Now he’s in his natural element in European football and can bring all his experience into play with players mostly new to the environment.
And Leicester now boast a two-point advantage at the top of the group following Porto’s 1-1 draw with Copenhagen, with the Portuguese side their next opponents on September 27. “Now we play the first match, there are another five.it was good for us to start our story with a victory”.
The goal echoed Mahrez’s first of two in Algeria’s 6-0 win over Lesotho 10 days ago and manager Claudio Ranieri said: “He tries to do something like that in every training session, also he scored in the worldwide game with Algeria”. I never thought I would get the opportunity to play in this competition, let alone score. “Maybe he was very, very exhausted of listening to dilly ding, dilly dong, maybe he preferred the Champions League music”, said Ranieri, reverting to a classic catchphrase.
Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri is not getting carried away despite his side easily winning its first Champions League game. I tried to say Slimani because he’s a penalty scorer. No, we are focused on the Premier League.
“We failed in the two because after two minutes we could have scored and the game was totally different”.
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Indeed, Leicester went all of last season shipping just three league defeats, so a pair of losses this early in the day is hardly a portent for more of the same. We want to win of course but it is a unusual competition.
