======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====
We all have our favorite underdogs that overachieved. The Amazing Mets, Indiana’s Hoosiers, Air Bud. But just yesterday, small town Leicester City won the English Premier League (soccer) for the first time in its 132 year history.
If that weren’t a big enough deal, the entire historic run was set off by a racist getting a rim job from a Thai prostitute. I’m not making that up.
First, a little backstory. For the past few decades, the English Premier League has seen a massive influx of cash. Saudi Princes (Manchester City), Russian oil barons (Chelsea) and even Americans like the Glazer family (Manchester United, Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and New England Sports Group (Liverpool, Boston Red Sox) have recognized this opportunity and begun buying up any big name player they can. This has led to severe inequality in the sport; only four teams have won the league title in the past 20 years.
And it’s left smaller teams like Leicester City scrambling.
Leicester City is tiny. Their main rivals are Nottingham Forest (again, not making that up). They have also had so much trouble that two years ago they weren’t even in the Premier League. British soccer has several different tiers of teams, and if you finish in the bottom three of your tier, you get dropped down to the league below – top three finishers get promoted to the league above. Two years ago, Leicester City was in the second tier. They finished first and were promoted. Last year, they were struggling so badly that they needed to win 7 of their last 9 games to avoid being dropped back down again – hardly a championship contender (they finished 14th out of 20).
Their team is also a hodgepodge. Being as they are so small with limited resources, one player on Manchester City costs more than their entire roster. Their player of the year, Riyad Mahrez, was an unknown second division French player who reportedly thought that Leicester City was a rugby team. Their top goal scorer is named Jamie Vardy. In 2007, Vardy was playing for a SEVENTH DIVISION TEAM, where he made £30 per weekend and worked in a factory during the week. Like fucking Rudy, or B Rabbit from 8 Mile.
In addition to struggling and having no significant players, their coach, Nigel Pearson, was a major asshat last year. He called a reporter an “ostrich” (an insult, I guess?) and then even had the gall to choke out an opposing player during a game. You know, something that’s definitely going to be on TV. He also shouted something at some fans in a game against Liverpool, which resulted in a fine and being banned from the sideline for the following week.
Which leads me to the rim job.
A few weeks before the season started, several of the younger players made a goodwill tour through Thailand. During this trip, a tape was released of several of the players – including James Pearson, the coach’s son – having an orgy with several Thai prostitutes. In this tape, James Pearson starts shouting racial epithets at one of the prostitutes while she’s rimming him, because apparently paying someone to put their tongue in your asshole isn’t insulting enough. As a result, all of the players involved and the coach were fired.
The new coach they brought in, Claudio Ranieri, made some changes in order to maximize their strengths. They hang back a lot on defense, and sometimes turn the ball over on purpose, waiting for opponents to make a mistake. This has led to two things: players not getting hurt and a whole bunch of counterattacking (Vardy is fast and great one-on-one. In a steadily built up attack he kind of disappears).
At the beginning of the season, bookmakers gave Leicester City a 5,000 to 1 chance at winning the league. To put that in perspective, Buster Douglass was 47-to-1 when he beat Mike Tyson, and British Politician Jeremy Corbyn currently sits at 1,000-to-1 to play the next James Bond. But with all the scrappiness and heart of your favorite cheesedick sports movie, Leicester City prevailed. So all hail LCFC, 2016 Premier League Champions! .
Image via YouTube
Respond
Icehouse
International sailing champion and friend to most wolves. Except Larry, he knows what he did.
@PJHart
@hart__attack
pjhart84
What a time to be alive.
It’s literally the unlikeliest sports championship of all time.
Congratulations on basically the only headline ever that would get me to read a story about soccer.
I try hard.
The paragraph consisting only of “Which leads me to the rim job.” was a nice touch.
5,000:1? That just makes the 200:1 odds for the Cleveland Browns to win the 2017 Super Bowl look like a bad deal.
It’s a great story and they’ve been fun to watch this season. Just one error, it was Riyad Mahrez who was the French player who thought Leicester City was a rugby team, not Kante.
I trolled all you EPL fans last week, but I bet this was pretty exciting to watch play out over the season.
Oh, and anybody taking bets on Kansas to win the college football playoff this year?
I’ll give you 5000:1
I’m in.
Its a real life Hoosiers
With hookers!
Pretty sure every great sports movie would be better with hookers…. Rudy, The Mighty Ducks, Brink, etc.
So dumb question; do they not have a playoff? Is the team with the most points at the end of the regular season deemed as the champion?
Correct. 38 games, 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw. Most points at the end wins.
That just seems too anti-climatic. I sure as shit wouldn’t want to go play that last game after already winning the whole thing.
Instead you’ve just got the NBA where the worst teams tank for draft picks and aren’t penalized, and most regular season games have the atmosphere of a pee-wee football game.
No one is forcing you to watch the Lions.
Will, did you jump on the LC bandwagon or did you support someone prior?
You should have seen how intense the game was against Manchester United and how much people cared about the Spurs game that sealed it. The magical thing about soccer is that literally any team can win on any given day, but that also makes it not as well suited for a playoff structure. We would be talking like a D League team beating the Cavs plausible for some of their tournaments, but over the course of a season the better teams emerge.
Isn’t that why we love March Madness so much though? Because on any given day, an unknown can beat a blue-blood?
They’re still too mad about a bunch of unknowns beating the red coats…
You still end up with those dramatic moments…
Take 2012. Manchester City and Manchester United were 1 and 2 going into the last match day. City hadn’t won the league since 1968, and were down 2-1 late into the match vs. Queens Park Rangers, a team who were almost relegated that season.
Manchester United wins their last match, putting them in first before the City game is over. City then scores once as stoppage time begins, and then furiously launches an attack that sees them put another one in with about a minute left in the game to win the title. Incredible. Watch this video to understand what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81bv_gF4j5k
I just can’t see it that way. Not only did the whole city party, but they also got into the Champions League for next year which is incredible for them. You literally cannot get any more climatic than that.
Given my extremely limited knowledge in all things futbol, is this the equivalent of a AAA team joining the majors and winning the world series? (Granted that they’re playing a full major league schedule.)
It’s kind of like that. There are a lot of levels in English football. LCFC made it to the Premier League in 2014-15 season. So it’s like a AAA team spending only 1 year in the league then winning the World Series the following season.
Exactly. Or a D-2 college team winning the BCS playoff.
I guess I mean anti-climatic in the sense that they won the championship because another team won a game. I would have much rather seen them celebrating after a playoff run and winning the championship game.
I was cheering for Spurs yesterday for this reason – I wanted LC to have to get a decision on the field to win, but it’s still a great story.
I see what you’re saying. But watch the next game they play. Everyone will be going ape shit. It’s going to be a crazy atmosphere and one reason to just keep partying throughout the end of the season.
Would they even bother to try though? The game is meaningless. Maybe it would have been better if the result of this last game clinched. Kudos to the coach though for negotiating a $7 million bonus into his contract for winning the whole thing though.
They had to play 36 games like it was life or death to get here, and they all had that atmosphere. I’ll let them coast the last 2.
Do pro-teams here try every game? They’re professionals and their next game is at home where the fans will be going bat-shit crazy, of course they will play to win. EPL has a tournament that runs through the season, though not on the level of the Title, is still a great trophy to win. I just tend to agree that the best team over the length of the season should be celebrated rather than whoever happened to get hot at the right time.
That’s why you also get to enjoy three teams trying to make sure they’re relegated