Leicester, suffering after victory

Still today in the central street of the West End of Leicester, in Victoria Park or in Jubilee Square, you will find some souvenirs of the city’s historical landmarks. Seven years have passed since the league’s title celebrations in 2016, the first and only in the 139-year history of the medium. City of Leicester. In some ‘souvenir’ shops you can still see pictures of open-top buses with blues players touring the city and the shirts of those heroes, Schmeichel, Morgan, Mahrez, Fuchs, Kanté or Vardy, which honors Fox’s finest moments. That success woke it from depression to the industrial and student capital of the East Midlands, by the river Soar, of almost half a million inhabitants.

The sound of the heartfelt chords of ‘Nessun Dorma’ sung by Andrea Bocelliduring the Premier celebrations from the center of the King Power Stadium, with the then coach, the Italian Claudio Rainieri, the architect of the club’s unexpected success. It was a great multicultural party, in the greatest glory days for the ‘Foxes’, which was then followed by their Champions League games, and shortly after, with Brendan Rodgers on the bench, another title in the 2021 FA Cup, against Chelsea and the Community Shield, against Manchester City. Happy days that are remembered with nostalgia now. The club’s current gray has taken a hit.

It’s like a bad awakening Leicester you live with the hangover of all the happy memories. The club is, once again, where it was before, fighting with teams in the lower zone that should not be relegated. The mismanagement of the economic resources won in the Champions League and little success in replacing the players of the successful stage, caused a slow and gradual decline, which brought long-suffering fans of the ‘blue’ that team in reality. ‘Foxes Never Quit’ is Leicester’s legendary motto city, which the players can read at the entrance to the changing room tunnel, before going onto the field. Now, far from the tinsel of the past, they have to apply it to the maximum, to fight for every point if they want to stay in the Premier.

Dean Smith arrives

On Monday they will have a decisive match Everton, another historical prestige club in the Premier, has become inferior and disgraced amid a crisis of results and very bad management. Those who lose the match will be seriously handled and are in serious danger of losing the category. Two greats sharing tradition and good times, punished for negligence of administration and poor sports planning. This season, they also share an urgent change of coach, a desperate resource in search of a way of salvation.

The seven-game losing streak of City of Leicester in the Premier they gave Brendan Rogers his place, and the one chosen for the challenge of saving the team was the expert English coach Dean Smith. The first days were not easy for him, but he improved his defensive performance and led the team to victory in the first game in which he sat on the bench at the King Power Stadium, against Wolverhampton (2-1).

The football manager Jon Rudkinand the president Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, a Thai businessman from the King Power group dedicated to the ‘duty free’ business, looked to the experience of Smith, who has a past at Brentford, Aston Villa and Norwich City, a wallet for the last eight decisive days, starting from loss of bad results. with Rogers leading to relegation. In Dean Smith, Leicester City managed to remain unbeaten in two consecutive games, but this did not prevent the team from continuing with relegation. Nottingham Forest’s victory over Brighton has turned into a more complicated battle for the final places.

The pressure is increasing every day and, before the decisive game against Everton, the club made an appeal to the fans, through social networks, to fill the King Power Stadium on Monday. But a sector of followers, who have already shown their displeasure over the years with tycoon Srivaddhanaprabha’s rule, fear the worst. Some media in the city are already reporting how the planning for next season should be and which players will remain at the club, in case of relegation to the Championship.

The situation is not better Everton. Almost seven years have passed since the Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri, owner of Russian holding company USM, emerged as the answer to Liverpool’s second club’s long and tumultuous search for investment, but its team’s plans and strategy in recent years have been disastrous. The high wages paid by Everton to players who did not give any performance, along with the constant change of coach, until the arrival of Sean Dycheis holding back the potential of the ‘toffees’, who are now also pending the construction of a new stadium, after acquiring land at the end of 2017, to replace Goodison Park.

For future and ambitious plans of Moshiri, relegation would be a tragedy. ‘Fight like your fans’ read a banner of their disgruntled supporters, to recriminate the players fighting to the death to save the team, which since the creation of the Premier in 1992, has never been relegated to the Second Division. The match at Leicester will mark the fate of the two clubs.