Leicester City's fairytale win scripts paens in print, online

It’s not for nothing that Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore called Leicester City’s incredible league win “the most remarkable thing that has ever happened in football” in an interview to The Times newspaper. The East Midlands club, who defied bookmaker odds of 5000:1 have been the subject of global praise following their league success, which was confirmed after Tottenham Hotspur failed to beat Chelsea on Monday night. Quite justifiably, Leicester City are the flavour of the season in not just football, but across all sport.

Here’s a handy reading list to take you through the incredible story of Leicester City, and how they pulled off sport’s biggest surprise win, the magnitude of which only gets higher, given the economic environment of the league they play in.

First up, Stuart James of The Guardian goes behind the scenes at Leicester City, going through the several decisions that helped the club achieve this amazing, unlikely success. This includes details of how they scouted and recruited some of their standout players, including French midfielder N’Golo Kante, who initially didn’t seem to impress manager Claudio Ranieri much.

Next, this short, crisp piece in The Economist offers a short explainer of Leicester’s success, and again, how they pulled it off. In the same pages, there’s also a story on management lessons from Leicester’s success, which primarily includes learning from one’s failures, adopting high excellence models used by bigger clubs (use of technology and data), and Ranieri’s relaxed training style, typified by the now legendary “dilly ding, dilly dong” imaginary bell he used during training sessions to keep his players focused.

In March this year, David Winner, football writer and the author of Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football, went long with his piece on Leicester for Newsweek Europe on what the club’s win means for the Premier League and football as such. The piece came at a time when winning the league was pretty much an idea, more than a reality. They were leading the table then, and that’s exactly where they’ll end up come 15 May, the last day of the season.

Also worth reading is this piece from last week, where long-time Leicester fan and Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait wrote on the science and math behind their league win. Personally, Micklethwait might not be celebrating, given that he forgot to place his customary £20 bet on Leicester City winning the league this season.

There’s also this piece in The Guardian by the inimitable Barney Ronay, who writes about how Leicester City’s triumph is the best possible advert for “the most basic sporting principle of open competition”. It’s a must read.

Two data stories are also interesting. First from FiveThirtyEight, where they’ve sought to chronicle Leicester City’s rise in two interesting charts. Second, the Financial Times’ data team’s piece on how Leicester City’s league win is a perfect case study in overcoming huge odds.

And to finish, some player profiles. Starting with Jamie Vardy, hailed as the ‘normal’ Premier League star by Bleacher Report. Next, Leicester’s Algerian midfielder Riyad Mahrez, who told The Guardian in September last year about how his father’s death changed him as a person, got him focused and here he is, a league winner.