Football takes back seat on day to honour ‘The Boss’

LEICESTER City has shared a 0-0 Premier League draw with Burnley at the King Power Stadium when football was again overshadowed by emotional tributes to the club’s late owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.

Thousands of supporters walked to the stadium from the city centre before the game, which was preceded by two minutes’ silence for the Thai billionaire. “The Boss” was the simple message on many T-shirts as up to 20,000 people embarked on a mile-long walk to the stadium, where two weeks ago the 60-year-old Vichai died when his helicopter lost control shortly after taking off from the centre circle and crashed in a car park.

With Vichai’s family in attendance, Leicester’s players, who made a 19,000km round trip to Thailand for the funeral midweek, wore special commemorative shirts, while almost every fan sported one of the specially distributed scarves bearing the words “Forever In Our Hearts”.

The football was always going to be of secondary importance in such emotionally charged circumstances and Leicester, without this season’s ever-presents Harry Maguire and James Maddison through injury, struggled to keep its focus. Jamie Vardy, who has not scored in five league games, went closest in the first half with a shot that was cleared off the line by Matt Lowton as Burnley battled to avoid a fourth successive league defeat.

Three former Leicester managers — Nigel Pearson, Claudio Ranieri and Craig Shakespeare — all watched from the sidelines.