JimLes
Well-Known Member
In case you've missed it, a wonderful story from the world of (metric) football.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles...eague-highlights-reaction-title-win-breakdown
Leicester City FC(pronounced Lester and generally known as the Foxes) have won the English Premier League, having started the season with odds of 5000/1. To put that into perspective, the Sixers were 250/1 to win an NBA title this year. 20 times less likely to win than the freaking Sixers!
The club had never won a championship in their 123-year history, having come closest by finishing second 88 years ago. I feel we've discussed European promotion-relegation system a few times on this board, so I don't need to go into the details of that. 2 years ago, Leicester were still playing in the second highest league, though they did get promoted. Playing in the Premier League last year, they were dead last with 10 games to go(bottom 3 teams get relegated), until they won 7 out of their 9 games to miraculously finish 4th bottom and stay up. No team had ever been in last place that late in the season and stayed up in the end.
The manager who was hired to keep them up and who did it ended up fired when three of his young players were involved in a scandal with rather poor treatment of a Thai prostitute they had chosen to record on video. One of the three was the manager's son. They then hired an aging manager recently sacked by Greece for losing to Faroe Islands(I know, you have to google them) whose greatest career accomplishment was that he managed to finish second more different times in top leagues than anyone else. He promptly led them to this championship.
Leicester's star striker and top scorer Jamie Vardy, who won Player of the Year award this year(the version voted on by journalists, as there are two), is 29 and at 24 was playing in the 7th tier of English football while working at a job making medical splints to pay his bills. 7th division is about the equivalent of a YMCA competitive basketball league.
His teammate and midfield playmaker of the team, Riyad Mahrez, won the version of the POTY award the players vote on. He was playing in the French second tier when Leicester bought him 2 years ago. He says he had heard of Leicester before, but says he thought it was a rugby team. Though born in France, he decided to play international football for his parents' country Algeria 2 years ago, seeing no realistic chance of making the French team.
It just goes on and on like this. Their starting right-side defender Christian Fuchs of Austria spent last summer in the States, hoping to get a tryout with an NFL team as a place kicker. He claims he can kick 65-yard field goals. His back up plan was to sign with an MLS team. Instead, he's now the champion of England.
This is probably the greatest upset and the most unlikely story in sports history. It's almost impossible to compare it to North American sports because of lack of promotion-relegation, but it'd be somewhere in the region of one of the 5 Div 1 teams that haven't ever made the NCAA tournament since NCAA split into divisions in 1948 making it next year and winning the whole thing. St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers being NCAA basketball champions level of unlikely.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles...eague-highlights-reaction-title-win-breakdown
Leicester City FC(pronounced Lester and generally known as the Foxes) have won the English Premier League, having started the season with odds of 5000/1. To put that into perspective, the Sixers were 250/1 to win an NBA title this year. 20 times less likely to win than the freaking Sixers!
The club had never won a championship in their 123-year history, having come closest by finishing second 88 years ago. I feel we've discussed European promotion-relegation system a few times on this board, so I don't need to go into the details of that. 2 years ago, Leicester were still playing in the second highest league, though they did get promoted. Playing in the Premier League last year, they were dead last with 10 games to go(bottom 3 teams get relegated), until they won 7 out of their 9 games to miraculously finish 4th bottom and stay up. No team had ever been in last place that late in the season and stayed up in the end.
The manager who was hired to keep them up and who did it ended up fired when three of his young players were involved in a scandal with rather poor treatment of a Thai prostitute they had chosen to record on video. One of the three was the manager's son. They then hired an aging manager recently sacked by Greece for losing to Faroe Islands(I know, you have to google them) whose greatest career accomplishment was that he managed to finish second more different times in top leagues than anyone else. He promptly led them to this championship.
Leicester's star striker and top scorer Jamie Vardy, who won Player of the Year award this year(the version voted on by journalists, as there are two), is 29 and at 24 was playing in the 7th tier of English football while working at a job making medical splints to pay his bills. 7th division is about the equivalent of a YMCA competitive basketball league.
His teammate and midfield playmaker of the team, Riyad Mahrez, won the version of the POTY award the players vote on. He was playing in the French second tier when Leicester bought him 2 years ago. He says he had heard of Leicester before, but says he thought it was a rugby team. Though born in France, he decided to play international football for his parents' country Algeria 2 years ago, seeing no realistic chance of making the French team.
It just goes on and on like this. Their starting right-side defender Christian Fuchs of Austria spent last summer in the States, hoping to get a tryout with an NFL team as a place kicker. He claims he can kick 65-yard field goals. His back up plan was to sign with an MLS team. Instead, he's now the champion of England.
This is probably the greatest upset and the most unlikely story in sports history. It's almost impossible to compare it to North American sports because of lack of promotion-relegation, but it'd be somewhere in the region of one of the 5 Div 1 teams that haven't ever made the NCAA tournament since NCAA split into divisions in 1948 making it next year and winning the whole thing. St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers being NCAA basketball champions level of unlikely.
