Leicester City’s 5,000-1 triumph: One of the greatest stories of all time?
David Hayward
is a video consultant. Twitter: @david_hbm
Jubilant Leicester City fans celebrate clinching the Premiership title
Leicester City’s incredible season is being hailed as the greatest sporting story of all time. A team of misfits and rejects, has done the unthinkable and won the English Premier League.
This is not only the greatest sporting story all time. This is one of the greatest stories of all time, one to rival Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea or Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films… Perhaps.
What makes it so fantastic is not only how unpredictable it is, but how it follows the perfect narrative arc of storytelling.
All great stories follow pretty much the same structure and principles: the beginning or hook; rising tension, developed by creating conflict and resolution; the climax and conclusion.
The quality of the story then rests upon how unexpected it is: the greater the challenge and the greater the adversity, the better the story.
This one certainly has all of this – in spades.
The narrative arc
If we deconstruct Leicester’s season we can see how the narrative arc works so beautifully:
The hook
We are immediately grabbed by the Leicester City story, because of the great escape, the club’s incredible end to the previous season. With nine games to go they were bottom of the league, seven points from safety. But somehow they managed to avoid relegation.
Rising tension
So the attention, the draw is clearly there. What’s needed now is some conflict to build the tension. We were not to be disappointed.
Conflict
First came a sex tape scandal, involving the manager’s son and two other Leicester City players, then manager Nigel Pearson is sacked.
He is replaced by Claudio Ranieri, a man who was dismissed as manager of the Greece national team, after they lost to the Faroe Islands – yes the Faroe Islands.
Doom and Gloom.
Resolution
Incredibly , when the new season starts Leicester continue where they left off. They just keep winning. Early season joy takes a bash when they are battered 5–2 at home by Arsenal, but they keep on bouncing back.
At this point an almost equally unbelievable subplot emerges. Jamie Vardy goes on his record-breaking goal scoring streak. He scores in 11 consecutive Premier League games and gets called up to the England squad.
This is a striker, who five years previously, had been playing for Stocksbridge Park Steels, in the seventh tier of English football.
The season develops into a cat and mouse chase between Leicester City and the teams around them, with Leicester going top , only to be pegged back.
Meanwhile there is a strange and emotional realisation among City fans that this could really happen – encapsulated superbly, by a tearful supporter who phoned into the BBC Radio 5 live phone-in programme 606.
Conflict
But then it looks as if they slip up. They concede a dramatic last minute goal against the mighty Arsenal, to give their rivals victory. The gap is closing and the race for the title wide open.
Resolution
Leicester come back again, they put together a winning streak, securing the riches of Champions League football. We enter the final few games of the season and they are stretching their lead. If Leicester beat West Ham in their next game they are almost certainly champions.
Conflict
But a good story would never allow this to happen.
The controversial game ends in a two-all draw, with Jamie Vardy being sent off and banned for two games. And with the talismanic Vardy out , how on earth could Leicester continue this form?
Resolution
But they do. Vardy’s replacement Leonardo Ulloa scores twice as Leicester comfortably beat Swansea 4–0.
The climax
The climax comes when Tottenham fail to beat Chelsea in a thrilling end-to-end match and Leicester are champions.
Falling tension and conclusion
The falling tension, ultimate resolution and conclusion is provided when the title and trophy is presented after the last home game of the season.
The underdogs, misfits and rejects
The narrative of this story works on so many levels: the drama of the season; the small club taking on the big boys and winning; the triumph of the team ethic over the finances of the wealthy elite.
At this point I do need to declare an interest. I am a Leicester City fan and season ticket holder. I’ve had the joy of witnessing this incredible story first hand.
Life as a Leicester supporter has never been easy. It has essentially been a painful experience, with the odd explosion of joy.
This has made up for it all.
I wanted to end by putting it into context. I clearly had my tongue firmly in my cheek, by suggesting it’s the greatest story of all time – but think on this.
At the beginning of the football season a few optimistic fans got odds of 5000-1 on Leicester winning the title. Today you can get odds of 2000-1 on Elvis being found alive, while the discovery of the Loch Ness Monster is just 500-1.
Imagine if either of those happened? Wouldn’t that be the greatest story of all time?
This is an abridged version of David Hayward’s original article.
The story of Leicester City’s incredible season will feature in the Coventry Storytelling Festival #CovStoryFest on 20 and 21 May 2016 at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, BBC Coventry and Warwickshire, The Tank Studio at Coventry University and Coventry Cathedral.
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