As Leicester City continue to test our collective powers to suspend our disbelief, scribes the football world over are attempting to capture the Foxes' improbable odyssey in as pithy and effective a way as possible. We have now come across a potentially unsurpassable contender, courtesy of NBC commentator Arlo White.
He spoke to Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated, and he quite excellently summed up the change in mindset that has allowed Ranieri's Leicester conquer all before them, referring to the remains of King Richard III being found in a Leicester car park back in 2012:
Leicester is not a one-horse town. It’s a significant city, top 10 in terms of size in the country. But it has always been overshadowed by Nottingham in the Midlands area. If you look at any inferiority complex Leicester might have had with Nottingham, they have Robin Hood, well now Leicester has Richard III. So they’ve almost equalized in terms of medieval characters. You couldn’t write this stuff!
It's a very neat way of summarising Leicester's extraordinary run, and we're frankly quite annoyed that we didn't come up with it. If you are unfamiliar with Richard III, he is the British monarch who has looked most like Robbie Keane:
So any traditional underdogs who exhume the body of a king in future should be very, very excited. Elsewhere in the piece, Kasper Schmeichel summed up how the Leicester players have been motivated by the fact that most of the players have been rejected elsewhere:
Yeah. A lot of players here, including myself, have been to other clubs and had success and had some not-so-successful periods as well.
Those are the times that sculpt you and shape you as a man, as a player. The easy times are when you’re winning. Everything’s fine, nothing can go wrong. But when things go wrong, that’s when you sort of learn about yourself and your teammates.
This team has been through highs and lows, and you learn a lot about each other. People having that type of rejection at other places stokes the fire inside you, and you have a personal desire to do well, that nothing’s going to hold you back. And you keep going with the mentality that you’re going to succeed no matter what. A lot of the players here have that mentality.
It's a really interesting piece, which you can read here.
