Ali’s comeback a true fairytale
Once upon a time there was a club who paid £54.4 million for a group of men in boots to kick a ball around for nine months. The players drove fancy cars and, despite having to live in a pigeon-infested town even asylum seekers turned their noses up at, they scored lots of goals and all lived happily ever after.
Fairytale? It’s not exactly Cinders sweeping the fireplace then rushing off to the ball.
Granted, Leicester City have been the ultimate rags to riches story in 2015-16. Their squad price tag is a shadow of the £161m spent by hard-chasing rivals Tottenham. Both pale beside the oily palms of Manchester City, who cashed in £418m to buy their players – eight times that of Leicester.
Leicester’s regular playing XI cost a mere £21m. To put that in perspective, Manchester City’s Eliaquim Mangala, alone, cost £42m.
And while a sporting fairytale is about a lot more than bank statements, all power to Leicester. This time last year they had to win six of their last eight matches to avoid the drop. What cunning little Foxes they are.
They started this season as 5000/1 outsiders and are in line to laud it over the giants of the game, spearheaded by striker Jamie Vardy. In five years he has gone from playing in the seventh tier of English football while earning a crust making medical splints to playing for his country.
And the bloke feeding him the ball has been a little Algerian winger called Riyad Mahrez, who was signed for £400,000 – Chelsea’s monthly dry-cleaning bill. You have to love Leicester, but there are better tales. There’s shock. Unknown golfer John Daly at the 1991 US PGA at Crooked Stick. He made the starting line when Nick Price pulled out at late notice, borrowed Price’s caddie and claimed a shock victory at odds of 1000/1.
And there’s triumph. Cancer-surviving jockey Bob Champion won the Grand National at Aintree in 1981 just two years after being told he had six months to live. But the greatest tale belongs to the greatest. Muhammad Ali was the forgotten man in Zaire in 1974: still to be fully embraced after his three-year exile for refusing to fight in the Vietnam war; and concern from those who only saw an ageing boxer, fearing what the 24-year-old bull George Foreman would do to him in this Rumble in the Jungle.
The bookies rated 32-year-old Ali a 40/1 outsider in a two-horse race.
Since returning to the ring, Ali had lost to Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, while Foreman had knocked out both fighters within a couple of rounds. It was said Foreman wasn’t boxing, he was trying to kill people.
Ali soaked up every blow before seizing his chance. As Ali took some awful punishment, Foreman was punching himself out.
By the eighth round, Foreman was in big trouble. Ali’s right hand did the damage deep into the round, and a final glorious swing dropped the big man to the floor.
Leicester might be the year’s feelgood story but there is only one truly great sporting fairytale. And in this, Ali doesn’t live happily ever after.