What Would Leicester City Winning the Premier League Mean for English Football?

Three points—the stated objective of every player, every manager, every owner and every supporter on a weekly basis.

This places Leicester City’s upcoming visit to Manchester United in an interesting light. A victory for the Foxes at Old Trafford wouldn’t be an ordinary three points, but possibly solidify the greatest accomplishment in the history of English football.

Odds of 5,000-1 at the beginning of the season was manager Claudio Ranieri’s challenge. How the Italian has cultivated a title-winning side from the mostly tattered remains of former manager Nigel Person’s 2014/15 season is beyond logic, beyond explanation—but a win against Louis van Gaal’s men would place Leicester as gods in the pantheon of sporting underdogs.

There have been one-off moments of shocking sports feats. Where one shot, one punch, one sprint has changed the course of history. Maybe the best example being Buster Douglas knocking out the undefeated all-conquering, all-destroying Mike Tyson in February 1990. One punch (followed by a few more) irreparably altered the course of heavyweight boxing and the lives of both men. 

What Leicester have done, and are doing, though, is not the puncher’s-chance cliche to which we’ve become accustomed. This is a systematic deconstruction of winning (arguably) the hardest league in world football; not a one-off event, but a week-after-week, game-after-game and point-after-point endeavour.

To win the Premier League—when your best attacking players, Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy, cost a combined £1.4 million, when you were almost …

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