Leicester City: Daring us to dream

The thing about the Leicester City phenomenon is that it creeps up on you. In certain circles, where you all follow football regularly and often talk about nothing else, you become accustomed to Leicester City being there, being on top, being popular. Because of the members involved, Leicester’s success is almost a joke used to tease and mock your Arsenal and Tottenham-supporting friends.

But then you leave that small group and enter the wider world, and the Leicester City phenomenon hits you. Whether it’s friends who occasionally follow football remarking on how incredible it is, friends you knew followed football vocally supporting a team that you didn’t know that they cared about, or even people who you know couldn’t care less about football and usually make a point of saying it, now suddenly mention it out of the blue.

When you’re used to a very insular view of football it can be a shock how widely the Leicester City phenomenon has permeated popular culture. I keep describing it as a phenomenon because that’s what it is. It is a shock – it’s crazy. In a footballing world where the Premier League title has only been won by three teams in the last ten years, all of whom having spent hundreds of millions of pounds buying global superstars, Leicester City are a brilliant anomaly.

Football fans across the world, even casual fans, even people who knew nothing about football six months ago, even people who still know nothing about football – they’re all buying into the dream.

This is a club whose star player cost less than half a million pounds and whose star striker was playing in the conference just a handful of years ago. This time last year nobody would have dreamt that Leicester would be anywhere near the top of the table, let alone winning the thing. Heck, this time last year it still looked unlikely that Leicester City would even be a Premier League team this season.

And that’s just part of why this story is so magical. It’s not just the improbability of it all, the fact that it really is a fairy-tale, but the sheer number of people who are buying into it. Leicester’s title dream will be cheered not just by their own fans, or supporters of Arsenal and Chelsea who are relieved Spurs didn’t win it, but by just about every football fan in the country and beyond. Football fans across the world, even casual fans, even people who knew nothing about football six months ago, even people who still know nothing about football – they’re all buying into the dream.

Everyone knows who Leicester City are now. They know that what is happening now will probably never be bettered in English football. That is what makes this dream so magical – it’s made everyone believe in the impossible.