It might have taken 132 years, but Leicester City’s EPL title will be unforgettable
Arlo White has seen a lot of soccer during a broadcasting career that has taken him to four continents in 16 years. But last spring he saw something he had long given up hope of ever witnessing.
Leicester City, the luckless, hopeless, low-budget team White had cheered for growing up in the East Midlands, overcame 5,000-to-1 odds to win the English Premier League title. It was the most stunning upset since David took out Goliath with a pebble and a sling.
“I could barely believe it was unfolding in front of me,” White said. “I don’t think that it’s sunk in yet. Leicester City won the Premier League by 10 points. It’s utterly remarkable.”
The Foxes came back to Earth a bit on Saturday, losing a preseason friendly to Paris Saint-Germain, 4-0, at the StubHub Center. The four-time defending French champions got first-half goals from Edison Cavani and Jonathan Ikone and second-half scores from Lucas and Odsonne Edouard to remain unbeaten on a three-game U.S. tour in which it outscored opponents 10-2.
The Chicago Cubs are a dynasty compared to Leicester City, which hadn’t won a first-division title in its 132-year history. And just 13 months before winning its first, the team had been on the verge of relegation to the second tier of English soccer.
Seven years before that it had been on the verge of bankruptcy.
Now it’s the champion of the best soccer league in the world. And White, NBC’s lead play-for-play voice for EPL games, got to celebrate twice — first when he called the Chelsea-Tottenham draw that clinched the title for Leicester, then a week later when he narrated the presentation of the EPL trophy at the team’s tiny King Power Stadium.
“It’s a moment in time that the people of Leicester (pronounced LESS-ter) will never forget,” White said.
The same goes for those who had to watch from afar, like many of the 25,667 who showed up at the StubHub Center on Saturday.
“I’ve supported the club for 50 years. And I never thought I would see it happen,” Mike Witkowski, a Leicester City fan who flew down from Portland for Saturday’s game, said as he nursed a beer before kickoff. “There’s always a mediocre club just struggling to stay up. And then to win the championship? Unbelievable.
“It will never happen again.”
Leicester City’s triumph is arguably the biggest underdog story in sports history. In an era in which money rules soccer, Leicester City won with a payroll of less than $64 million, fourth-lowest in the league. Manchester City spent more than that on Kevin De Bruyne alone.
And Manchester United has spent more on transfers in the last two seasons than Leicester City has spent in the history of the franchise.
The team’s Thai owners were well aware what their investment was likely to buy. So after narrowly escaping demotion to the second division a year earlier, Leicester City had modest expectations when it brought Italian Claudio Ranieri on as coach last summer.
The hiring was met with derision in England and Ranieri, who hadn’t won a first-division title in a 29-year coaching career, was asked only to get the team to 40 points, which figured to keep it safe from relegation.
Leicester City reached that number with 18 games to go. By then the team’s long-suffering fans, with their fingers tightly crossed, started thinking seriously about the unthinkable.
White was among them, though he had to remain impartial in public, especially when broadcasting games involving Tottenham, Leicester’s most dogged pursuer.
Soon those two hours in the TV booth each weekend became a welcome respite.
“That was the time I could relax. The 6½ days either side, I was wreck,” said White, whose home office features framed programs from Leicester City’s four FA Cup appearances, of all which, naturally, ended in losses.
“I was waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats catastrophizing (yes, White uses words like catastrophizing) about Tottenham winning every game. That Leicester would lose on goal differential in the final day of the season.
“It was part excitement and partly horrendous.”
The celebration has only just ended in Leicester City, where a quarter-million people turned out for the team’s victory parade. Now a new season starts in less than two weeks, a season that, for the first time, will include an appearance in the Champions League.
White both chuckles and shudders when he thinks of the Champions League anthem playing at humble King Power Stadium.
“It’s going to be a surreal experience,” he said.
As for the EPL season, it’s unlikely any champion has ever gone into a new year facing less pressure than Leicester City.
“I don’t think there’s any expectation from their fans that they’ll ever do it again,” White said. “And if they don’t that’s fine. Because they did it once.”
kevin.baxter@latimes.com
