(OT) Leicester City

[Hoffs]

As some will know, my father passed away at the back end of last year. Towards the end of his life he had become disinterested in just about everything, but the one thing he still enjoyed was following the local soccer team Leicester City. The English Premier League is dominated by a handful of clubs with billionaire owners who throw money around to sign the best players in the world, teams like Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United. The best that many other clubs can do is just hope to survive. Whilst Leicester now have wealthy foreign owners too, they don't have anything like the resources of the big clubs and they have been continuing their trend of the past few decades of one year trying get promotion from the second division into the Premier League and the next desperately trying to avoid being relegated back down. Last year they miraculously managed to avoid relegation thanks to a late season surge when it seemed certain that they would  be kicked down a league.

But this season the team have been something of a revelation. Under a new manager and a fast-paced style of play they have taken the league by storm and have shown how a bunch of players working tirelessly together can run rings around a team full of "mercenaries" with no conviction. At the start you could have got 5000-1 against them winning the league championship, yet with thirteen games remaining they are, in US terms, two games clear of everyone else and have just had convincing wins against two of the three other main contenders (they play the third one, Arsenal, in the next match).

Although I don't care for soccer myself, I am of course cheering for my Dad's team, but with every success it also leaves nagging questions: why oh why couldn't he have lived another six months to have seen their finest and hour and, if they do manage to go on and win the title, probably the greatest accomplishment in English soccer history? Why couldn't he have lived to hear this things like this (he always listened to the matches on the radio)?