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Leicester supporters celebrate their first-ever Premier League title. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Julian Barnes: my stupid Leicester City love

This article is more than 7 years old
Leicester supporters celebrate their first-ever Premier League title. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

The Booker-winning author – and Leicester fan of more than six decades – on why Premier League triumph means we are all Foxes now


I haven’t always been a Leicester City supporter: there was a time before I could read, or knew how to tune the Bakelite wireless to the voice of Raymond Glendenning on Sports Report. But from the moment I became sportingly sentient – say, the age of five or six – I have been (as they didn’t much say then) a Fox. So, six and a half decades and counting. I did, initially, support a second team – Partick Thistle, from the grittier end of Glasgow. But that was because my infant mind believed they were called Patrick Thistle, and my middle name is Patrick. I eventually stopped supporting Thistle – such is the strange, irrational adhesiveness of fandom – when I was about 40; though of course I still instinctively check their results in my Sunday newspaper. But apart from this dalliance, I have been entirely monogamous.

Julian Barnes. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

Support for Leicester has been fashionable this season, of course: how many times have sympathetic voices spoken the words, “We are all Foxes now.” And generally, it’s been heartfelt, as was the thumbs-up from my Kurdish greengrocer after he invited me to confess my football allegiance over a plastic basket of veg. We are all Foxes now: that’s to say, this season Leicester became most football supporters’ second team; if their own lot couldn’t take the title, then better Leicester than some hated and despised rival. “Yes, I’ve been supporting the Foxes this season,” my friend Rachel Cooke confided. “I mean, after Sunderland, and then the Blades, of course, and Liverpool.” But it’s more than just a passing sentimental indulgence. Fandom routinely consists of a swirling mix of stupid love, howling despair and frantic self-loathing; but Leicester have also brought into violent focus what other supporters think of their own teams and managers. A long-standing Arsenal fan emailed me a couple of months ago – when everything could still have gone terribly, terribly wrong for Leicester – with his ideal scenario. “I hope you win,” he wrote. “And when you do, I hope that Arsenal fans, thinking of the £125,000 a week squandered on Per Mertesacker and Theo Walcott, will march on the Emirates and burn it down.” Well, I shan’t feel responsible if that happens.

There are other reasons why “We are all Foxes now.” For a start, there is absolutely zero chance of Leicester winning the title again next year: it will be back to big money, big-city teams, Pep Guardiola, perhaps Mourinho, and so on. The Big Five (or Six) will once again be in charge. So we offer no long-term threat. But it is also because Leicester embody a kind of football – and ethos – which still speaks to the inner squaddie of most fans. They are – or at least, they seem to be – selfless, highly industrious, unbigheaded, romantically all-for-one-and-one-for-all, and prepared to scrap till the last minute of added time: the puritan virtues dressed in blue. They don’t have a bloated bench of internationals. They don’t rotate because there isn’t that much in the dressing room to rotate. They were all very cheap to buy: Riyad Mahrez, the players’ player of the year, cost £400,000 when he arrived from Le Havre (whereas Manchester United are currently about to spend £46m on a Portuguese midfielder). And – another item of appeal to the romantic – the Foxes are proving that there are such things as second acts in the life of a footballer; in some cases, even third and fourth acts.

A large projection of Leicester striker Jamie Vardy is seen on the side of a building. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

To be a lifelong supporter of Leicester is to have spent decades poised between mild hopefulness and draining disappointment. You learn to cultivate a shrugging ruefulness, to become familiar with the patronising nods of London cabbies, and to cling to an assortment of memories, of pluses and minuses, some comic, some less so. Yes, we have won promotion to the top division every so often; but the fact of promotion logically implies an earlier relegation. Yes, we did win the League Cup; but what burns the soul are the four times we reached the FA Cup final and the four times we lost. When asked to name my three sharpest Leicester memories, they are of varied texture: a pathetically heroic Len Chalmers, in the days before substitutes were allowed, hobbling around in an FA Cup final against Spurs back in the black-and-white days (he played 60 minutes with a broken leg, whereas today’s softies collapse from the mildest case of ingrowing toenail); Keith Weller’s hilariously unstoppable own goal, volleyed from near the half-way line, a clip of which used to be part of Match of the Day’s introductory collage; and the moment, deep into extra time, when we beat Crystal Palace in the play-offs at Wembley in 1996. I was seated among tiers of incredulous Palace fans as Steve Claridge shinned the ball in from a distance of at least several inches. Yes, there have been some fine managers, glorious moments, and players like Banks, Shilton and Lineker. But more typically I think of that year not so long ago, when, weeks into the season, the team’s leading scorer was one of our defenders – with three own goals.

Leicester City fans celebrate in their cars after their team’s improbable title win. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

I long ago learnt to rationalise the situation. “Yes, Leicester City,” I would answer for the thousandth time. “But you see, supporting Leicester is very good training for supporting England. You get hardened to the disappointment, so it doesn’t hurt as much.” Actually, it probably hurts just as much when, every two years, England go out in the quarter-finals of this tournament, the preliminary rounds of that, or fail to qualify altogether. Which raises a dangerously alluring proposition. If Leicester can win the Premier League, why shouldn’t England win the Euros on 10 July? There are good reasons, of course – called Germany, Spain, Italy and France – but then there were good reasons (Man City and United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs) why the Foxes could never end up on top of the heap and king of the castle. And that’s another thing I’ve been noticing this season: that it’s impossible to talk about football except in cliches. This is not just the default linguistic position; it’s the only one. And so, all those phrases have come tumbling out of my mouth. “It’s been a roller-coaster of a season.” “It’s a massive six-pointer.” “They left absolutely everything out there on the pitch.” “I just hope we can dig out a result.” “We’re hoping the Blues will do us a favour on Monday night.” Not to mention all the reynardine stuff about the flying Foxes and the Fox in the box. When asked, “Are you still Dreaming the Dream?” I would automatically reply, “Yes, but I’m also beginning to Feel the Fear.” Still, everyone in football, apart from Eric Cantona, speaks the same way. Verbally, it’s a truly democratic sport.

Another of the season’s pleasures has been to see the professional sportswriters – and yes, let’s not forget to call them “pundits” – get it all so wrong. As the Guardian, with touching masochism, admitted in February, its football writers had jointly predicted at the start of the season that Leicester would finish 19th of the 20 teams in the Premier League. Unabashed, they continued on with their predicting: five of these eight house sages now decreed that the Foxes would definitely go on to win the title. Such confidence was, of course, extremely troubling to a Leicester supporter. Even more troubling were those statistical analyses which proved, either by historical comparison or analysis of upcoming fixtures, that Leicester were logically bound to win.

The crowd go wild after Leonardo Ulloa’s late winner against Norwich City on 27 February. Photograph: Plumb Images/Getty Images

For most of the time since we went top of the Premier League, I was fairly phlegmatic about the likelihood of eventual failure. But as the run-in approached, my behaviour began to show the nerves my team seemed immune to – yes indeed, I was Feeling the Fear. I got snappy when people started saying, by way of advance consolation, “But you know, even if they don’t do it, it’s still been an amazing season.” No, it won’t have been, I silently replied. And I knew how much I really, really wanted Leicester to win when I saw them lose at the Emirates (disgraceful ref, of course) and then scramble a 1-0 victory at Crystal Palace.

My attitude towards learning the results also changed. Traditionally I operate a news blackout on results from Saturday and Sunday teatimes until Match of the Day, occasionally becoming enraged when some football-loving “friend” poisons those hours of anticipation with an email headed “congratulations on another win” or “it was never a sending-off”. But as the spring advanced, I found myself checking the results immediately after the game. And then, unprecedentedly, following the live text-feed. I think watching a live feed is far worse than watching a live match. That awful minute-or-so’s delay between action you know has already taken place and the arrival of words to describe it allows for all kinds of foreboding. So, a key match at home to West Ham. 1-0, second half. Cruising, obviously – we never let a 1-0 lead get away from us nowadays. Then the slipping chug of the text-feed suddenly turned blue. Vardy sent off! What! Penalty! What! 1-1. Choker! In a blink, 1-2. Despair! Just a few minutes of added time. Oh well, make a cup of tea. Come back to more sudden blue. Penalty!!!!! 2-2. 10-man Foxes dig out a result! The Dream is still alive! What a peltingly dramatic match that had been to read.

Ulloa scores the last-minute penalty to give Leicester a 2-2 draw during the Leicester City v West Ham United match on 17 April. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

A few weeks ago, as the sharp-shirted buzzards of Match of the Day contemplated the season’s run-in, Alan Shearer recalled the time he won the title with the last “unfashionable” club to do so, Blackburn Rovers. Like Leicester, they had seemed to be moving effortlessly towards the title; but in the last weeks jitteriness took hold, until in the end, as Shearer put it, “We fell over the line.” This seemed an all too plausible parallel, and, being a realist (ie pessimist), I naturally pushed the prediction further: the Foxes would fall not over but just before the line, trampled into the May mud by Harry Kane and company. But that didn’t happen either. When Leicester took the title, it was with a lead of seven points and two games to go. There are going to be a lot of little boys in Leicester over the next few years bearing the names of Kasper and Wes and Robert and Danny and Riyad and Jamie, I can tell you.

The team did it; Ranieri did it; Pearson began it all; the fans did it; the owners helped. Even Richard III is being given some talismanic credit for the spectacular change of fortune. But I would also like to claim a small assist myself. In March of last year, when the Foxes were mired at bottom of the table and seemingly bereft of all hope, I found myself in Santiago de Compostela. Behind the cathedral’s high altar is a gilt and bejewelled life-size bust of Saint James, reached from either side by a set of steps. Apparently it is traditional for hopeful and credulous petitioners to embrace the saint from behind while making a wish. This is not my kind of thing at all. But then it was explained that before setting off for each World Cup or European Championship, the Spanish squad climbs the steps, embraces the bust, and asks the saint for victory. So, in fully ironic mode, I gave old James a hug and requested him to ensure that Leicester City escaped relegation. As I came down the other side, I said to him under my breath, “And if you can do that, I might have to believe in you.” When the season ended with the Foxes not just safe but lower-mid-table, I felt a certain moral queasiness. And now look what he’s gone and done: talk about Saint James the Over-Deliverer. In which case – and this might be pushing our theological luck – there is the small matter of the Champions League next season. Then I’d really believe in you.

  • This article was amended on 7 May 2016. An earlier version stated that Holland were one of the reasons England may not win the Euros on 10 July. The Dutch national team did not qualify for Euro 2016. This has been corrected.

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