Schmeichel’s wonder save could herald a new start
Leicester showed a true footballing meritocracy can trump hand of greed
MASON MOUNT teed up the shot and hit it perfectly. The end with Chelsea fans had the clearest view and they could see, it was heading goal-wards. There were 87 minutes on the clock and Leicester’s heart was surely about to be broken. The one hand they had on the FA Cup was about to be forcibly removed.
Then, from a standing start, a huge blur of yellow flung himself across the goal. It was Kasper Schmeichel, invoking the spirt of Jim Montgomery, 1973, underdogs, Sunderland and all that.
Somehow, despite the power of the strike, Schmeichel, whose father Peter won this trophy three times, was able to stick out one of those giant hands, connect and deflect it wide. Mount looked aghast, like something supernatural had occurred. It was a save to be replayed down the ages, an astonishing act of athleticism.
It was not the last or the most terrifying scare Leicester would encounter. Seeing veteran captain Wes Morgan score an own goal, seeing Chelsea celebrate raucously and then being reprieved by VAR was even more dramatic.
And yet that Schmeichel save spoke volumes. In the 77th minute he had produced another stunning save to preserve his team’s lead. He is one of the 2016 vintage of title winners but a keeper who was with Notts County in League Two, who seemed to be making his way at Leeds but was deemed surplus to requirements when they reached the Championship, so Leicester took him on.
All over the pitch were indicators of why this club is so admired. A few are left from the Premier League glory years. Jamie Vardy, signed from Fleetwood, a man who has played in every round of the FA Cup including all those obscure qualifying ones in early autumn.
Off the bench came Marc Albrighton, discarded by Aston
Villa and Wes Morgan, who they signed from Nottingham Forest, title winners both.
‘You don’t want too many Leicesters,’ one Premier League executive of a Big Six club was reported to have said. You could see his point. Much more of this and football might be approaching a meritocracy, where the best-run clubs thrive and those which have owners trying to trade off their historic reputations while they sit in the USA counting the cash, lurch around in search of a vision.
All the best of the club was on show here. The image of the late Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, killed in the 2018 helicopter accident at the King Power Stadium, looked down on them, literally, adorned on one of the banners which covered the upper tier in the absence of additional fans.
‘Our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.’ It does not always work out like that. Not neatly, anyway. But it did for Vichai at Leicester. His son, Top, was here, carrying the family connection.
Schmeichel had made the point before this game that there has been a lot of talk about rogue owners of late, of the tendency to treat fans, players and clubs as commodities rather than partners and community assets. Leicester do things rather differently. Here they treat the club like family. ‘Champions of England! You made us sing that!’ they chanted. And now FA Cup winners as well.
The club’s functionality was on show on the pitch as well, for example in youth development. Lose your world-class left-back to a rival (and Chelsea could afford to leave Ben Chilwell on the bench)?
No problem. They had another waiting in the wings in James Justin. Lose him to injury? Again. Not a problem. They just promoted a 19-year-old from the academy, Luke Thomas, and let him take on the challenge of an FA Cup final.
Then there was Brendan Rodgers. It cannot be discounted that he has won two Scottish Premierships, two Scottish FA Cups and three Scottish League Cups. Yet in England he will be forever associated with being the man who almost won the league title with Liverpool.
Here was a vindication of his talent, a glory day to replace the pain of 2014. To think, with Chelsea to play again on Wednesday, he could yet take them into the Champions League.
And then there was Youri Tielemans. When they took him on loan from Monaco in 2019, it was an understated addition. The Big Six, the self-appointed power brokers of the game, were not in for him.
But Leicester had seen a fine footballer who would thrive in the Premier League. Rodgers would inherit the signing, a month later. There is a reason why he was willing to incur the fury of Celtic fans mid-season. He knew that Leicester was the kind of the club who sign excellent players for their manager. That he would never be in the position that Rafa Benitez once found himself in at Valencia, where he memorably complained of the directors and their signing that he ‘had asked for a table and they bought me a lampshade’. No one surpasses Tielemans in his party trick, that fine pass threaded through the opposition for the striker to run on to. Some do it as well as him. No one does it bet