Leicester misses first chance to clinch Premier League title.
MANCHESTER, England — Leicester missed its first opportunity to clinch the Premier League title, drawing 1-1 at Manchester United on Sunday to move within two points of the most unlikely championship in English soccer in a generation.
Second-place Tottenham, which is eight points behind Leicester, must beat Chelsea away on Monday to keep alive the title race.
Leicester fought back at Old Trafford after going behind to Anthony Martial’s eighth-minute goal, with captain Wes Morgan heading in a free kick to equalize in the 17th. Leicester midfielder Danny Drinkwater was sent off in the 86th for a second yellow card.
A win would have sealed the title for Leicester, a modest team from central England that narrowly escaped relegation last season and entered bankruptcy protection only seven years ago while in the third tier. Leicester’s remaining games are against Everton at home next weekend and Chelsea away on the final day of the season, but it might not go that far.
Leicester manager Claudio Ranieri was flying to his native Italy later Sunday to visit his 96-year-old mother. He will return on Monday, during the Chelsea-Spurs match.
“I will be the last man to know the result,” Ranieri said with a laugh.
United’s failure to win kept the team fifth and dented its ambitions of qualifying for the Champions League. But this game was all about Leicester, and whether Ranieri’s team — a 5,000-1 longshot for the title with British bookmakers before the season — could achieve the seemingly impossible feat that would rank among the biggest underdog stories in sports.
The team known as “The Foxes” are still heavy favorites, and their vocal, flag-waving travelling contingent made that very clear as they chanted, “We’re going to win the league” over and over after the final whistle.
It would be the most implausible top-flight title triumph since Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest won in 1978. So endearing is Leicester’s story that even United supporters applauded the Leicester players off the field at Old Trafford.
Ranieri’s team of rejects, journeymen and unheralded foreign players has been confounding the doubters all season and they did so again at the so-called “Theatre of Dreams.”