IT’S SAUL OVER FOR FAB FOXES
Niguez gem leaves no way back
A nd that was it, the last game of the most incredible season in English football. 2015-16: when Leicester won the Premier League.
What a ride it has been. What thrills, what surprises, all the way through to the final 30 minutes here when Leicester needed two more goals to eliminate Atletico Madrid, and left nothing on the field in their ferocious search for them.
When referee Gianluca Rocchi blew the final whistle, Leicester’s players sank to the turf, spent. The fans rose as one, a deserved standing ovation. Yet when the din subsides and the adrenaline stops its pulsating course they, too, will recognise that they have witnessed the end of an era.
This was the last match that is a product of Leicester’s title win. And now that it is over, when will we see its like again? Realistically, when will Leicester win the title or even challenge for it? When will they play in the Champions League, or even Europe? At the moment the final whistle blew, it was done. not just this game, but two years of escapism and astonishment, a unique and surprising period in the history of English football.
This quarter-final, and Leicester’s exit from the Champions League, marks the conclusion of a narrative that took in a 5,000-1 title win, the rise and fall of the charismatic Claudio Ranieri and an unlikely Champions League run, the last English club standing in Europe’s biggest competition.
Yet in praising Leicester it would not do to dismiss the immense efforts of Atletico Madrid. not many clubs in Europe would have been able to withstand the ferocity of Leicester’s second-half onslaught and that they let in a single goal is credit to them.
Riyad Mahrez played the ball out too, seizing it and sprinting for the centre circle before a Madrid player could delay the restart. There were still 30 minutes remaining. What followed was noisy, emotional, courageous, pulsating, chaotic, but ultimately not enough.
Kasper Schmeichel came up to add his presence to the forward line at dead balls and Madrid blocked and smothered with the intensity of underdogs, clinging to a shock FA Cup lead. The locals loved every minute of it — but it was, sadly, nowhere near enough.
Leicester needed three goals — three quarters of the total Atletico had conceded in the Champions League coming into this game — but had to settle for one.
At the end, diego Simeone congratulated Craig Shakespeare’s players as well as his own, but it was September 16, 2014, when Atletico last leaked three goals in Europe, and a repeat never looked likely. They are colossal, defensively.
The problem for Leicester was always going to be the away goal — the lack of one in Madrid and the threat of one here. It meant that if Madrid scored, Leicester needed three, and in the 26th minute, they did.
What a beautifully executed goal it was, too. A sublimely targeted cross, a magnificently placed header. It isn’t true to say Leicester had no chance because Christian Fuchs should have been more aware of his surroundings. But to apportion blame detracts from Madrid’s precision and that would not be right.
Filipe Luis picked out Saul niguez, who had come off Fuchs and had enough time and space to target the corner of the goal with his header. It was cushioned, it was measured, it had sufficient power to elude Schmeichel and there is not a striker alive who would not want it in his highlights reel. But Saul plays wide.
From there, Madrid defended mightily. They queued up to win headers, to block, to harry, to close. Leicester tried all their old tricks — the ball over the top, the inswinging corner, the low flat throw from Fuchs. Madrid repelled it all.
At the end, as Madrid’s players went to applaud their fans, some in the home crowd booed. It seemed a strange and unnecessary reaction. They will not see many teams as good as this around these parts for a while. Sadly, they may not see many teams like this at all.