Leicester have taken on the mantle of England’s club – warts and all

Foxes have come too far in Europe to let a single goal and a dodgy referee kill their buzz

Abaking hot afternoon in the Spanish capital, and the Plaza Mayor is a rhapsody in blue: the royal blue of Leicester City’s travelling support, and the dull dark blue of the Spanish police. Somebody smashes a bottle, and everybody cheers. A chant of “Ten German Bombers” goes up. A black street seller appears and is serenaded with “Ahmed Musa”.

A few hours later, with Leicester 1-0 down against Atlético Madrid, Jamie Vardy is chasing the ball into the right channel. Filipe Luís eases his body craftily in between Vardy and the ball, and shepherds it out for a goal-kick. Vardy is convinced it was a corner. He runs towards the Swedish assistant referee,

All this feeds into the Leicester legend: the cheeky underdogs (albeit wealthy underdogs; the 20th richest club in the world, according to the latest Deloitte Money League), upsetting the established elites with their tired orthodoxies, disdainful complacency and fancy foodstuffs.

This season, the show has gone on the road. In a way, Leicester are English football’s stag party. If they were a fan, they would be a guy standing shirtless in a continental square singing about how Gibraltar is ours. And so, strangely, this game felt like act two of what had occurred in the Plaza Mayor earlier in the day: English industry against Spanish obduracy.

How the Calderón crowd howled at the ferocity of some of Leicester’s early challenges. How elusive Antoine Griezmann was in those opening minutes. Atlético are often