Leicester’s rise bring the groove back to football

I was live streaming the game but I still had my mind engaged somewhere else and didn’t get to see the ‘real time’ penalty and last gasp Leicester City equalizer against West Ham.

And so does the story of my waning football fanaticism go…I stopped paying much attention, a while back, actually after the 2008 season or something.

Honestly, partly because Rafael Benitez had destroyed Liverpool and my beloved club was in shambles and so I watched in envy as the other fans followed their well performing clubs.

Bayern Munich too, my other beloved club wasn’t doing well either, then.

Still there were these few flashes from time to time over the years that I watched a Liverpool game, and of course Bayern became stronger, so I should have had every reason to follow football ardently; but no, it has been hard to bring myself back to fanaticism.

Why? Well because football became so predictable! …and boring! I have always held a conservative view when it comes to European football, that the less emphasis on big names and big spending to get the so called big players, then the better the game, the more competitive and the richer in tactics.

I say this because until early 2000s, after football became about money and getting big names to win everything – I have never forgiven Real Madrid for starting this trend – league football in Europe was never predictable as it is today.

If Bayern played Juventus then, you were likely to see the resilient, efficient and possession laden German football against the defensive and magnificent counter attacking Italian football at play, with majority players on the pitch being homegrown and thus; the a magnificent display of tactics in the match.

So would have been the case if Ajax Amsterdam played Manchester United and you’d see the fast, pass and move English game against the Dutch total football identity, and so on.

After the commercialization of the sport however, identity was thrown out of the window, everything was predictable and all small clubs faced extinction.

Leicester City however are on the verge of a football revolution, at least in England and hopefully in Europe in next season’s champions league.

A club that has had a fairy tale season in dreamland that could be reality in the next 24 hours.

They have defied the odds, who repeatedly predicted their lead will be short lived and they would finally implode as other such fairy tale clubs usually do towards the end of season, the likes of Portsmouth and Ipswich town in recent years.

So unthinkable the fete was that former England striker, Gary Lineker, promised to strip and present BBC’s Match of the Day in his underpants if Leicester wins.

Well he will now, but inside, I’m sure the Leicester born and bred and one time Foxes player is loving what’s happening.

Leicester  has proven that big names don’t matter, that big coaches don’t really matter, that small clubs can shake off that tag and that ultimately it’s the teamwork and strategy employed that can win you anything!

This is just how far Leicester have come.

-Rugby club-

Just ponder this, one of their key players, Riyad Mahrez, who has just been crowned Premier League young footballer of the year, joined the club from Le Havre in France, and confessed then he never heard of Leicester City, and just assumed it was a rugby club.

Robert Huth -the German defender- is not even in the world champion’s national team and leading scorer; Jamie Vardy has earned his place in the English national team at 29.

It’s a wake up call to all the small clubs, to challenge for everything, to tame the ever growing and exaggerated rates of the so called big names and restore the identity of the beautiful game.

Finally they prove that football can be to a larger extent than it is now, unpredictable and competitive!

Who thought the world will look at the Old Trafford game between Leicester and Manchester, as such a big game, a title decider and not because of  United but because of the lowly Leicester?

It doesn’t matter now whether they win it or lose it, Leicester  is the only club, that currently deserves the title; a big club!

But will their players fetch the same money as the stars in the other so called big clubs in England?

So for all the small teams out there, all this thing about big clubs and big names is just in the mind. Go on, challenge them and let’s have a football revolution!!

I guess I’ll be a fanatic again, at least for the next season, hoping more Leicester’s are on the way!