Puel breaks silence on Leicester tragedy

‘Players must give their all to honour chairman’ Schmeichel ran to crash site to offer assistance

For Claude Puel the show must go on. Speaking for the first time since club chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha was killed in a helicopter crash outside the King Power Stadium last weekend, the manager of Leicester City said he had a responsibility to honour the owner’s memory by continuing the work he had set in train.

That requirement will begin tomorrow at Cardiff City, a match which, Puel revealed, will go ahead at the insistence of Vichai’s son Aiyawatt, known as “Top”. And this despite the fact that Vichai’s weeklong funeral in Thailand will begin the same day.

“When I saw all this sorrow, I am devastated, but I have responsibility to move us forward together,” Puel said. “My message is that the game is not important, the result is not important. Our desire to give the best on the pitch to honour our chairman is the most important thing. About our conviction, our focus, we will be ready. I am confident the players can give their best.”

Behind Puel (right) as he spoke in the King Power press room was a picture of Vichai in his moment of greatest triumph, holding aloft the Premier League trophy in May 2016. But as the vast, ever-growing swell of flowers, scarves, shirts of every club in the country spreading out across the stadium concourse suggests, the Thai businessman’s impact on his adopted city went far beyond football. “He was a nice man, his warmth, his kindness, he changed the lives of a lot of people,” Puel said. “He was someone who wanted other people, the people around him, to be always happy.”

In the face of what he described as the toughest week in the history of the football club, the dignified, quietly spoken Puel recalled how, like so many in the city, he had been touched by his chairman’s generosity. “Personally, he escorted me to the races at Ascot, to polo, I met Prince William and Harry, it was fantastic, he shared all these things with his staff,” Puel said. “He loaned me his boat to take my family to Antibes. This is the image I want to keep of him. Always fantastic moments we shared, it was about life, what we can share together with his family. He put us in his family.”

Puel had talked with Vichai ahead of the game against West Ham. He recalled that the last time he saw his chairman alive he was smiling, enthusiastic, characteristically upbeat. Afterwards Puel was in his office at the King Power with family, friends and members of the coaching staff, when the awful news came through.

“Of course we were devastated. We cannot understand what’s happened. We remain a lot of time together without the possibility to share words. It was silence.”

The only player who still remained in the building when tragedy struck was Kasper Schmeichel, who immediately ran outside to the crash site in the attempt to offer assistance. “I don’t want to give the details of course, just that for Kasper he saw a lot of things,” Puel said of his goalkeeper.

“Like the other players who lived all these events in the past with the chairman, Kasper is devastated. All my squad has a lot of sadness and upset.

“We made a meeting at the training centre to speak, to share our feelings, it was important to talk between ourselves, to share this difficult moment. It was a long day.”

As he spoke, outside the stadium the line to sign the book of condolence snaked around the crash barriers. A small boy in a Leicester shirt stood in silent contemplation of a blue banner which read: “You made the impossible possible.”

Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha may be gone, but in a city awash with gratitude for what he delivered, he will never be forgotten.