After the miracle, the mourning
Ahelicopter rising from the pitch to sweep a billionaire owner away from a game was a symbol of how far Leicester City have come. That aircraft ditching and exploding in flames in an adjacent car park affirmed how fragile life and the good times are.
The crash alongside Leicester’s King Power Stadium on Sunday after the 1-1 draw with West Ham United, was a human tragedy, far more than a setback for a football club. It was life and death, not wins and losses.
And the Leicester fans who filed to the ground to pay their respects to the club’s Thai owner and four other assumed victims of the crash needed no reminding that life cannot be predicted.
Witnesses to a miracle, in May, 2016, thousands came in October, 2018, to observe the brutal opposite of civic joy. When they first arrived, a whiff of burnt aviation fuel could still be smelt a few hundred yards away. Many said they would always remember where they were, what they were doing, when news of the fireball reached them. Many of Leicester’s players and staff will certainly never forget. Kasper Schmeichel, the Premier League title-winning goalkeeper, was among those who ran towards the scene of the crash when routine post-match family time was broken by the bang of crunching metal.
‘‘Thank you for making our dreams come true,’’ read one inscription on a Leicester shirt. Another said: ‘‘God bless you and your family Vichai – grateful to you for all you have done for our club. Respect.’’
The universal theme was gratitude. If Chelsea and Manchester City have since snatched back power for the old cartel, here, on a day of loss, was another illustration of what it meant for Leicester City to be champions of England. One man wore a shirt with the words: ‘‘Journeymen, Misfits, Rejects, Champions.’’
If there was an abiding image of this sad day, it was Leicester supporters approaching the shrine with flowers in one hand and the palm of a young son or daughter in the other. Mothers and fathers came with their children to lay bouquets, Leicester shirts from all eras, soft toy foxes, Buddhas, scarves and pictures in a concrete field of remembrance that was stretching towards the road as daylight faded.
There were shirts too from other clubs: Sheffield United, Liverpool, Leeds – and a scarf with a written message: ‘‘For everyone associated with LCFC – from Coventry City FC.’’
On a concourse where fans once reached for bottles of free Thai beer laid on by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, supporters gave thanks to a man who had still not officially been pronounced dead. Players from the Thai International Academy – another gift from Srivaddhanaprabha – dropped to their knees and bowed en masse amid residents of one of Britain’s most diverse communities.
In 60 seconds, it would have been possible to walk from the floral shrine to the scene of the crash, in a car park where, mercifully, no bystanders were caught in the inferno of Srivaddhanaprabha’s favoured mode of transport. Except that police cordons protected the accident site from view as the Air Accidents Investigation Branch took charge, apologising, in a later statement, for the slow release of information in the interests of ‘‘clarity’’.
Beyond the National Grid Refurbishment Centre, on a patch of tarmac enclosed by trees, sat the incinerated remains of an Agustawestland AW169 that was meant to drop Srivaddhanaprabha at Luton Airport for a transfer by private plane to Thailand, headquarters of the King Power empire.
From Leicester to Luton is 110km: a mere blink in aeronautical terms. But this journey ended a few metres from the ground Leicester’s Thai owners bought eight years ago at the start of the revolution. To some Leicester fans, the owners’ ability to soar and leave after games may have felt like evidence that their club had entered football’s age of foreign tycoon owners. They liked him for the free beer and doughnuts but loved him for the English title win and its passport to the Champions League; they loved him for Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez, N’golo Kante and all the other heroes of an impossibly happy campaign.
The last time outsiders thronged to this stadium in such numbers was to acknowledge the miracle of that Premier League title win at 5000-1: a triumph that brought hope to the 87 clubs outside the notional top-five of Champions League regulars. This beacon win for Claudio Ranieri’s team was acclaimed across football as a victory for romance over logic, hope over reason. Memories of those celebrations remain vivid. And after a tricky follow-up season, when it all might have fallen apart, Leicester have largely recovered, with Ben Chillwell, Harry Maguire and James Maddison leading the new wave. Their next home game is likely to be Burnley – on Remembrance weekend.
But now foreign TV crews were amassing around the flowers. Just before lunch, seven Leicestershire fire brigade vehicles passed us with blue lights flashing. One carried a mini-bulldozer. Later, large screens were erected around the helicopter’s charred remains. Much grisly work lay ahead for people whose job is to attend disasters, take care of the dead, clear the debris and provide explanations. Their work is harder than football.
On the night the clocks went back, Leicester stepped into winter feeling terrible sorrow. Losing a benefactor was not the only cause of the grief.
People are not so shallow. All who showed up at the King Power were acknowledging the starker facts of life and death, for all who were in that helicopter. The proximity of the crash also cast a spell. Sometimes death can be so close. Football knows this, from many disasters down the years. But a billionaire’s helicopter is not meant to rise, malfunction, spin, plunge and explode in flames a kick of a ball from the stands. Dreams are not meant to end that way.