Tiêu đề 3. Leicester City and the greatest underdog story ever told.pdf ✅

ONLINE TRAINING GLOBAL CITIZEN PROGRAM Leicester City and the greatest underdog story ever told: a primer for Americans By The Guardian on 30 April 2016 Jamie Vardy celebrates with Leicester City fans after scoring against West Brom during an April match. Photograph: Tony Marshall/Getty Images Everything you need to know about the little team from the East Midlands who find themselves one win from the biggest miracle in sports history On Sunday morning, at about 11am eastern time, a unglamorous team from the unglamorous East Midlands, which has never won the title in its 132-year history, could find itself in a place it’s never been before. If Leicester City beat Manchester United at Old Trafford, the Foxes, as they’re known, will be crowned champions of England – and one of soccer’s most astonishing underdog stories will be complete. Leicester City. Not Chelsea, or Arsenal, or Manchester United, teams burnished with petro-dollars and star talent and years of accumulated knowhow; little Leicester, from the English provinces, with their genial old Italian coach Claudio Ranieri, and their motley crew of rejects, unknowns and never-weres. Twelve months ago they were certainties for relegation; now they’re seven points clear with three games to go. It’s so improbable that people are using the M-word. Gianluca Festa, a former player of Ranieri’s, is in no doubt. “If you want it truly, and are prepared to work for it, then miracles can happen.” Has there been a more compelling story in soccer history? Wimbledon FC won the FA Cup in 1988, beating the mighty Liverpool 1-0 in the final just 11 years after entering the Football League. Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest winning the European Cup in 1979 and 1980 takes some beating. But
ONLINE TRAINING GLOBAL CITIZEN PROGRAM those were victories achieved over shorter periods, in a different era. Leicester have sustained their excellence over the course of a 38-game season, and to do it in the context of modern soccer, where big teams monopolize the talent, and where money talks ... well, it’s surely unprecedented. In the US, hockey has its Miracle on Ice, and baseball its 1969 Miracle Mets, but Leicester’s achievement undoubtedly surpasses them. Their unremarkable nature seemed to reflect their home city. Leicester, a racially diverse, modestly prosperous city of 330,000 people 100 miles north of London, is famous for David Attenborough, its excellent local cheese, and the odd pop star – Engelbert Humperdinck, anyone? – but it’s hardly a soccer hotbed. Its rugby club, the Tigers, is arguably just as popular. Leicester, like most of the region, lacks a strong cultural identity: for East Midlanders, people from the south think you’re from the north, and people from the north think you’re from the south. In fact, Leicester might be most notable for the fact that people outside the UK can’t say its name right. (It’s pronounced Less-ter.) (...) But his Leicester team beat Sunderland 4-2 on the opening day in August, and they just kept winning, and winning, and winning. What began as a mildly diverting tale morphed into something with an impact beyond soccer: a feel-good underdog story without compare. As the season has rolled through the winter into the spring, everyone in England, soccer fan or not, seemed to be rooting for Leicester. “It’s very romantic – and I understand the whole country [being behind them],” Arsenal’s manager Arsene Wenger said in February. Now Leicester stand on the verge of history. Even if they fail to beat United on Sunday, they have two more chances: against Everton next week, and Chelsea on the last day. From here, it will be almost as big a shock if they don’t win the league. “It’s fantastic,” said Sven-Goran Eriksson, the former England coach who managed Leicester for a season five years ago. “It’s like a dream for everyone that loves football.” (...) Many of Leicester’s players have come from humble beginnings. Four years ago Jamie Vardy, their top goalscorer who has just debuted for England, was turning out for Fleetwood Town in non-league soccer; Mahrez was playing for Le Havre reserves, and N’Golo Kanté was breaking through in a Boulogne side sliding towards France’s third division. Marc Albrighton, inexplicably, was deemed not good enough for Aston Villa, the Premier League’s worst side by a distance. So what’s the secret to their success? At this stage last season, Leicester looked dead and buried. They’d been in the relegation zone for six months, couldn’t stop conceding goals, and seemed certainties to be demoted. Their roster this year isn’t vastly different, and yet the contrast has been extraordinary. “We do not have the best players, nor the biggest budget, but our solidarity compels admiration,” Mahrez said. Yet team spirit – “an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory,” as the former Spurs striker Steve Archibald put it – only gets you so far. Yes, they’ve avoided injuries, and they haven’t been hindered by midweek games in European competition, but Leicester are tactically sound, and they have better players than we sometimes realise. Their rise is no fluke. They deserve all their success.