Incredible days for ‘little guys’ of Leicester

kentonline editor

Okay, I’ve seen enough now. There’s only so much of your life you can spend people watching people in Leicester celebrate and it’s probably time to leave them to it. Not that they shouldn’t be celebrating one of the more remarkable sporting feats of our age, especially if they had money on their team winning the Premier League at the start of the season.

But even the good people of Leicester must be a bit partied out by now, yet probably feel obliged to carry on the festivities for the benefit of all the TV crews still camped out in their city.

Because the team’s triumph was secured by results elsewhere, there was no stadium full of fans to film for the live coverage of this historic moment.

Instead, everyone had to squeeze into a busy city centre pub. The punters were all then obliged to jump up and down for an unnaturally long time, as the party spirit couldn’t be seen to wane. I don’t know whether they had all been briefed not to swear because they were on live TV but the jumping up and down was accompanied by some of the most polite and restrained football-related chanting I’ve ever heard. And I’ve been to Reading.

The Leicester story is, rather annoyingly, being used by the Premier League as a way of selling their ‘product’ as one where the ‘little guy’ can win against the big boys with deeper pockets. But the very reason it’s regarded as such an exceptional case is that the big boys still win 99% of the time.

Still, these are joyous times for the people of Leicester, as well as the manufacturers of blue and white curly wigs. We should enjoy this triumph over adversity before normal service is resumed and we can all go back to hating the league champions again.