Jonathan Northcroft

Fearless How Leicester City Shook the Premier League and What It Means for Spo

How Leicester City Shook the Premier League, and What it Means for Sport. Trade Paperback

Fearless

How did you spend the long, hot, World Cup summer of 2018? For Jonathan Northcroft, chief football writer of The Sunday Times, it was 35 unforgettable days spent criss-crossing Russia, covering the biggest sporting event on the planet. He reported on a new England team: young, daring and successful both on the pitch, where they defied expectations to reach the semi-final, and off it, where they took on reporters in a darts challenge. He discovered a different Russia to the hostile state he was warned about in pre-tournament security briefings: open, friendly and football mad. And he experienced the rush of working as a football writer at the very top of the game: meeting the players, going to the games, and battling the deadlines. This is his personal account of a month when we dropped everything to watch the best World Cup for a generation.

England's Rebirth in Russia and other Unexpected Tales

Deadlines and Darts with Dele: My World Cup Diary

Simon Hughes

Philippe Auclair

Jonathan Wilson

Brian Oliver

Tim Vickery

Andy Brassell

First published in September 2017, Issue Twenty Six contains 23 articles in 7 sections, including Simon Hughes on what fan-owned clubs say about alienation from the Premier League, Priya Ramesh on how Dirk Kuyt helped Feyenoord end an 18-year drought, Manoj Narayan on why last season's champions are facing relegation in a shake-up of Indian football, and Philippe Auclair, Jonathan Northcroft, Tim Vickery and Brian Oliver, among others, look at their favourite stadiums.

The Blizzard - The Football Quarterly: Issue Twenty Six

“The odds of the Foxes winning the Premier League at the start of the season were the same as the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster being proven to exist, Christmas being the warmest day of the year in England or Barack Obama playing cricket for England after he left the Oval Office.” —ESPN On March 21, 2015, Leicester City lost their sixth game in eight matches. Without a victory for two months, they were rock bottom of the English Premier League, heading for certain relegation to the lower division, and about to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime financial bonanza of TV money and opportunity. As usual, London and Manchester would clean up, the rich would get richer, and the hopes of the small, overlooked, multicultural city would sink. But Leicester started to win. They stayed up; and in the new season they kept on winning. Favorites for relegation, rank outsiders as potential champions (their 5000—1 odds were the longest in the world for any major sporting event), their entire squad had been assembled for less than the cost of a single player for Manchester City. Still, they beat Manchester City and Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea: the most incredible cast of written-offs, grafters, misfits, and journeymen came together for the season of their lives. This is the story every underdog dreams of, every small town with a much larger, more affluent neighbor hopes for, and a triumph that defies logic and expectation.

The Amazing Underdog Story of Leicester City, the Greatest Miracle in Sports History

The definitive account of Leicester City's astonishing rise from relegation certainties to Premier League title winners: the greatest achievement in the modern football era. King Power Stadium, countdown to kick off. Out on the pitch a lone brass player sounds the haunting Post Horn Gallop, for 80 years the home players' entrance tune. Spines tingle. Air is gulped into opposition lungs. Game time, time to begin the chase. Burning fox eyes peer down from between the decks of one of the stands. On the stadium's outside wall a royal blue LCD display says #Fearless. Welcome to Leicester City. They were always a club with a difference but in 2015-16 they created a story that in modern football stands unique. Who could believe it: from relegation certainties to champions of England? It was when, on behalf of every small club, dreams were hunted at the King Power, a season where the impossible became merely quarry. 5,000-1 shots when the campaign started, Leicester's transformation has been remarkable. This is the most incredible cast of written-offs, grafters, misfits and journeymen, coming together in a special time and place to simultaneously have the season of their lives. Fearless will document Leicester's hunt of their impossible dream. It will tell the greatest football tale of the Premier League era, in loving detail, with the inside track. Now Leicester have gone all the way and won the title, it's the best story in world sports - for years. Champions of the Premier League. The side who'd been adrift at the bottom 12 months previously, who's started the season as relegation favourites, whose manager was favourite to be the first one sacked once the campaign got underway. A League One side only seven seasons previously. A squad of £500,000 and £1m men. Leicester. Ridiculous. Miraculous. Fearless.

Jonathan Northcroft

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