Great write up by a reddit user on the improbable run by Leicester City

Pretty crazy. Hand them the trophy if they follow up last win with a win against Arsenal.

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For those unfamiliar with soccer, this is like ULM going undefeated in basketball maintaining a #1 ranking, while beating Kentucky, Duke, and North Carolina on the way.

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It would be like ULM somehow making it into the NBA and winning 60+ games and destroying the warriors/cavs in the finals.

ETA: Kinda stupid to move this to the soccer board. The point of the thread illustrate an unbelievable underdog story to non-soccer fans. The people on this board are well aware of Leicester's current run.

I'm going to guess that the ratio of money from a low level DI school to a Power 5 is similar to the ratio of money from Leicester to City. I could be wrong.

quote:

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Pretty crazy. Hand them the trophy if they follow up last win with a win against Arsenal.

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They will still have a lot of work to do. Here's to hoping they pull it off to salvage something from this miserable sports season.

Again, ENS has no actual argument, and so is reduced to yelling at the sky.

ULM Athletic revenue: $12 million

LSU Athletic revenue: $133 million


11 to 1 ratio.


Leicester City revenue: 31.2 million

Manchester City revenue: 352 million



Pretty similar.

I Like Leicester and think its awesome whats happening but whats happening is all down to a ton of luck and fortune.

The team is out played every game, has the worst pass completion of any team and come in last in a majority of other stats, but some how they scrap goals and get the wins.
On top of that the team has been super healthy and have tons of rest time in between league games. Every team around them is struggling with injuries and in multiple tourneys with games midweek and weekends.

soccer is a weird game where any team can win on any day but the soccer gods are shining on Leicester and letting them win every game.

City game this weekend for example. I missed the first goal heard there should have been a pk to tie but not given, then on mahrezs goal two or three city players challenged for the ball and it kept poping out in front of him when it could have easily gone the other way, huths second was off a corner that never should have been a corner.

In tournaments( world cup/FA) underdogs can make it far because of fortunate calls or bounces or just luck(Chelsea somehow beating Bayern inCL) but over a season things should cancel out and we should have a better representation of the teams. (Chelsea not making top 4 the same year they won CL)

Just saying lady luck came all over Leicester this season, they aren't good. Still cool to see but title should go to Tot or arsenal

I'm going to keep RA'ing it to try and get it moved back.

timing has A LOT to do (man united, liverpool, chelsea in a funk; arsenal and city failing to pounce) luck counts too, everton could be up there if they didn't go full retard in the last ten minutes of so many games.

that said, it really is amazing compared to where they were last year at this time. i watched the core of this squad rape the championship three years ago and knew they would stay up, but didn't expect them to be in a relegation squabble last year, nor did i expect them to be challenging for the title this year.

rainieri is a big upgrade over pearson and having guys like mahrez and vardy in the form of their lives is huge. i hope they keep it up and keep this team together for a couple years and string some top-4 finishes together. it would be awesome to see.

also, the "new parameters for les miles" thread on the rant

Mahrez has been the best player in the league this season, and was extremely good last season as well.

Leicester is a very organized team and they have to in-form attacking players who can carry their offensive game. Their format is literally the same one that Arsenal and Chelsea used a decade ago to win the league and Man City's teams under Mancini, although Man City's offensive game those years was a little more advanced, using overlaps on the wings to create mismatches for Silva to run the show.

Leicester is a low block counter attacking team that relies on pace and speed to win games. It's not like the Man U teams who wanted to get as wide as they could to exploit space, nor is it like Ancelotti's Chelsea, who used speed and tempo of play in the low block set to win games. It is a very classic strategy to win the PL. Man City and Arsenal are attempting to build teams that win in Europe, where possession play and high pressure systems are awarded, except with the notable exceptions of Atletico Madrid and that Chelsea team from 2012. This is the conundrum of the PL since Barcelona's style became in vogue. The style required to win in Europe appears to be at odds with the style to win in the league. The problem here is that it is a fictitious difference. If Arsenal and Man City really committed to the low block, they'd do better in both the league and Europe. It's the attempt to play the high pressure, possession based systems that costs those teams because the low block teams they encounter regularly still get one to five clear opportunities a game, and finishing one of those chances increases the pressure on possession based teams, who still need patience to break through in the final third.

Leicester and Tottenham this season have made good use of positional play, and attempt to mitigate risk going forward. Man U is superb at positional play defensively but they are afraid to move passing patterns up the field for fear, whether unfounded or not, of risking a counter attack opportunity.

All that said, there isn't one great team in the PL this year, and I'd argue that there hasn't been a great team in the PL for a couple of years now, as the level of play has dipped considerably from the PL's height between 2006-2011 ish.