5000-1: The Leicester City Story

Introduction

In May 2016, I was finishing my freshman year at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. The downstairs of my freshman dorm was packed with pseudo-zombies, sleep deprived from finals week. Nonetheless, the eyes of the entire dorm were fixated on a large projection on the wall; a soccer game between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. Normally that many college students would not wake up until well into the afternoon, but this morning we were witnessing something truly special. As Tottenham threw away a two goal lead to tie the game 2-2, Leicester City FC were Premier League Champions.

I believe that this is the greatest underdog story in the history of sports. Leicester winning the Premier League is more impressive than The Miracle on Ice, NC State in 83, or even Kirk Gibson’s home run heroics in 1988. This was a team who had just barely escaped being relegated from the division the previous year. Their odds at winning the title were 5000-1. Manager Nigel Pearson left the club in the summer. Despite all this, they were still league champions come May. Leicester’s success in the 2015-16 season was predicated on three determining factors: smart spending in the transfer market, a very good goalkeeper and defense, and good old fashioned luck.

Shrewd Signings

Coming into the 2015/16 season, Leicester’s squad was valued at $104.03M, the second lowest in the league. Eventual team of the season award recipients Wes Morgan, N’Golo Kanté, Riyad Mahrez, and Jamie Vardy were purchased for £1.01M, £8.10m, £450k, and £1.12m respectively. The average transfer fee for an incoming player that season was £2.8M. Leicester in total spent £44.91M in transfers in the 2015/16 season, good for 14th in the league. By all indications, Leicester should have been a team struggling against relegation again in the 2015/16 season. Instead, they were crowned champions in May. How did that happen?

Defense Wins Championships

Once again I turn to Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski who outlined the on-field reasons for Leicester’s success. The first of which was a remarkably good defense. According to Patrick Lucey of the Chicago based data analytics firm STATS, Leicester’s defensive numbers were the best of any Premier League team in the past 5 seasons. Goalkeeper Kaspar Schmeichel (who, in my opinion was snubbed for team of the year) saved 4.6 more goals than expected over the course of the season, second in the league. Perhaps the most important brick in the Leicester City wall was player of the season N’Golo Kanté. Kanté ranked 5th in the league in interceptions and ran the most kilometers of any player in the Premier League. The diminutive Frenchman’s workrate led assistant manager Steve Walsh to note of Kanté “People think we play with two in midfield, and I say ‘No.’ We play with Danny Drinkwater in the middle and we play with Kanté either side, giving us essentially 12 players on the pitch.”

Being Lucky is Better Than Being Good

Despite the dutiful defending and shrewd signings, Kuper and Szymanski note that luck did indeed play a factor in Leicester’s title winning campaign. There were a number of factors outside Leicester’s control that, while not paving the road completely to the title, did serve to smooth it out a little bit. First, Leicester’s goal difference (goals scored minus goals conceded) was +32. This was the lowest number for a champion in more than 20 years. Leicester’s goals scored and goals against were, according to Soccernomics, “both two standard deviations better than expected.” However, luck would have it that all of the traditional title contenders had disappointing seasons at the same time. So of course luck played a factor in this improbable title run but humans do not take kindly to luck having a determinative factor in important outcomes. As Einstein himself once said, “God does not play dice with the universe.”

This last post before the conclusion has been less about the financials of Leicester City during that title winning season and more telling a story that I want more people to know about. What happened in this season was, in every sense of the word, remarkable and I think that this story is one that should be told more often.