For the non-soccer fans out there, I have a very simple question. Do you happen to know who currently sits atop the English Premier League table? A team that boasts a five-point cushion over its nearest rivals? A team that has outscored the opposition by 20 goals in the EPL alone? A team that has lost only two matches all season? A team that features the leading goal-poacher and the second-leading assister for this season?
Fess up, folks — you said Manchester City, Manchester United or Chelsea. If not one of those three, then you said Liverpool, Arsenal or Tottenham. Don’t be sad, young grasshopper — in any reasonable Premier League season, one of these teams would be happily perched at the top of the table. But this Premier League season has been anything but reasonable. And so, it is with great joy that I inform you that the team at the top of the table is… Leicester City. Yep, I hadn’t heard of it either.
Leicester City was only promoted to the Premier League in 2014, having spent the 10 years before that toiling away in the lower divisions of English soccer. Upon its promotion, it sank to the bottom of the Premier League and was threatened with relegation before going on an impressive run of form to guarantee its presence in the Premier League this season. In the offseason, the Foxes made very few moves, mostly bringing back the key core of their roster and adding a few internationally regarded talents, like Shinji Okazaki from Mainz and Gokhan Inler from Napoli. The rest of the squad was essentially unchanged, and most people predicted a repeat mid-table finish for the Foxes.
Newly appointed manager Claudio Ranieri had other ideas. Leicester started the new Premier League season on an unholy tear, with striker Jamie Vardy breaking Ruud van Nistelrooy’s long-standing record of goals scored in consecutive games (Vardy scored in 11 straight games) and Riyad Mahrez becoming one of the most dazzling and befuddling wingers in the world.
Save for a brutal 5-2 shellacking at the hands of Arsenal (more on that in a second), Leicester has been exceptional, losing only to Liverpool at Liverpool in a should-have-beat-them-handily kind of game. The Foxes have attacked marvelously, scoring the most goals in the EPL thus far this season, behind Vardy’s league-leading 18 strikes, Mahrez’s 10 assists and a staunch defense led by Christian Fuchs, Robert Huth and Wes Morgan.
Pundits kept predicting that Leicester City’s luck would run out, that its sharp start was indicative of feeding on the minnows of the EPL while the sharks still circled. The Foxes have put rest to that notion by beating defending champ Chelsea, perennial title contender Tottenham, longtime heavyweight Manchester United and longtime bugaboo Liverpool. In its most recent match, against a hungry Manchester City team that had just confirmed Pep Guardiola as its coach starting next year, Leicester tore apart the opposition, handily beating a team that was assembled at nearly 10 times the cost of its own 3-1 in a match that was not nearly as close as the score indicated. If anything, the only blemish on its resume remains the surprising loss to Arsenal.
But revenge is a dish best served cold, and Leicester has an opportunity to give Arsenal its just desserts this weekend, as a clash of the first- and third-place teams in the EPL is imminent.
With just 13 games left to play, a number of opportunities for the Foxes to pad their statistics against the dregs of the Premier League and the relative underperformance of the typical heavyweights, the opportunity of a remarkable EPL title is there for the taking. Leicester, unburdened by the expectations of European football in the Champions League and the Europa League, can focus its full attention on winning the EPL, a result that would be among the most shocking ever seen in this era of multi-billion-dollar super-teams. Tune in to watch Leicester play this weekend against Arsenal — trust me, it’ll be well worth your time.
Vignesh Venkataraman’s editors are pretty sure that he doesn’t even know how to pronounce “Leicester” properly. Ask him for a sound-byte of him butchering the proud language of the Brits at viggy ‘at’ stanford.edu.