Mourning for a man who united a multi-ethnic city around football
▶ Gareth Browne reports from Leicester in the wake of the city club chairman’s tragic death
The concourse outside Turnstile 57 of Leicester’s King Power Stadium is largely quiet on a bitter weekday morning.
Only the occasional gust of wind breaks the silence. While there are few sounds, the area is the most crowded in the city.
Despair has reigned in this corner of middle England for five days, since a helicopter crash killed Leicester City’s billionaire owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and four others.
In that time thousands of fans have gathered outside the stadium to offer tributes to a man who inspired a city.
The crowds are constant, even on weekday mornings. A school bus arrives – the headmaster cancelled morning lessons for those who wished to pay their respects. Others have taken days off work, and travelled the length of the country.
Srivaddhanaprabha, 60, was the unassuming hero of an unlikely story in which a plucky underdog club conquered the richest football league in the world. Fans say it was his vision and generosity that propelled an unassuming midland city to the Premier League title in 2016.
“He dared us to dream, and then he made those dreams come true,” says Bill Joy, his arm around his teary wife Kay outside the stadium.
Leicester is one of the most diverse cities in Britain but one that came together behind its Thai benefactor, six years after the billionaire bought Leicester City Football Club for £22 million (Dh105 million).
He poured millions more of his fortune from running duty free shops into the club.
With a new management, the owner presided as the club was transformed into a league-winning side.
It was not a flattering place to choose. Statistics indicate that all is not rosy in Leicester.
Disposable income is among the lowest in the country, and unemployment went up slightly last year, bucking the national trend. The glow of the club’s run, in which it defied expectations to win the Premier League, is still palpable in a sense of pride and unity in the otherwise struggling city.
“Skin colour, gender, age – none of them mattered at the Foxes, it’s the same in the city,” says Gurj Mann, who bought his six-month-old bulldog – clad in a Leicester shirt – to the ground. “He put us on the map. I was in Thailand last year, everyone recognised my Leicester shirt, they knew Jamie Vardy – it was mad.”
Many among the thousands of messages left for Mr Chairman, as fans dubbed him, describe him as a friend or a family member, an indicator of how personally much of the city is taking the loss.
“We are all hurt, it’s like a death in the family,” said Vijay Sangam, who works in a shop on Narborough Road, a street named Britain’s most diverse in 2016 in a study by the London School of Economics.
“I don’t want to think about what’s next for the club, we are so far away from how things felt in 2016,” he says.
Mr Sangam points to Srivaddhanaprabha’s generosity when it came to funding various infrastructure projects throughout the city – often completely unrelated to the football club.
He gave millions to the university’s medical department and to the exhumation of the body of Richard III after his burial site was discovered in a city car park.
But it was about far more than the money, Mr Mann said.
“He came to every home game, do you know any other club owner that does that?” he said. “He was from so far away, but he was able to bring this city together”, Mr Joy said.
Like many city residents, Mr Joy was born elsewhere, as his Irish accent betrays. Praise has also been heaped on helicopter pilot Eric Swaffer, who brought the falling craft down in an empty car park as the aircraft failed, avoiding any casualties on the ground.
His partner – Izabela Lechowicz – who was also crewing the helicopter, died in the crash.
Aviation experts labelled his actions heroic – residential areas, hotels and retail outlets pepper the areas adjacent to the stadium, a different ground zero might have spelt even greater disaster.
On Saturday Leicester face Cardiff City, the club’s first game since the tragedy and the first game of a new era, not just for the club, but the city too.
While the man who made his billions in duty-free shops will not be there in person, his memory is everywhere.
Mr Mann hopes that the glories are not all in the past. “We gotta carry on his legacy, have to hold our heads high. In a way, I think this might bring us even closer together.”
We gotta carry on his legacy, have to hold our heads high. In a way, I think this might bring us even closer together GURJ MANN Leicester City supporter