It was a true underdog story. Leicester City, a club which was in the second division of British soccer just two seasons ago, won the Premier League, Great Britain’s top soccer league, on Sunday, May 8. Just a season ago, the team ended the season a measly six points above the relegation zone, which consists of the three teams at the very bottom of the league that get relegated to the second division the next season.
At the beginning of the season, the odds of Leicester winning the Premier league this year were placed at 5000 to 1, and yet, here it is, champions of England. What’s more amazing about this feat is the sheer difference in finances between Leicester and the other top leagues in Britain. Leicester spends far less than competitors, and it employs a system related to Sabermetrics, in which they spend smaller amounts of money based on scoring value and statistics, rather than scout determined levels of talent. Leicester’s success proves that pumping money into a team is not always the answer.
The summer is the time for change, when the big teams are looking for that extra player to tilt the title in their favor and other clubs are searching for solutions to the deficiencies of the current squad. There are two transfer windows, one beginning on July 1 and closing on September 1, and the other beginning on January 1 and closing on February 1. During the summer, Leicester invested £38 million ($54 million) on new players. That sounds like a significant sum of money, but it is roughly half the summer expenditures of Chelsea, last year’s champions, who currently sit ninth in the league, 29 points behind Leicester. Chelsea spent some £68 million ($98 million) on new players, and yet when they faced Leicester back in December, Leicester prevailed, 2-1. In the January transfer, Leicester added one new player to their squad on a free transfer. Manchester City, a contender for the title up until a couple weeks ago, spent over £150 million ($216 million) on new players during the off-season. Leicester prevailed 3-1 in its most recent encounter with Manchester City.
The value difference between Leicester and its competitors is equally incredible. The average market value of a Manchester City player is nearly £16 million ($23 million) compared to the meager £4 million ($5.77 million) at Leicester. Leicester ranks twelfth in the league in average market value per player, behind teams like Newcastle and Everton, who did not even make the top ten in the league table Too often, money guarantees success in professional sports.
There was concern that because of Leicester’s lack of depth it would be unable to hold its top spot in the Premier League. What this Leicester City team had was the hunger and desire to prove everyone wrong and win the title. It had a coach who was constantly optimistic. It had fans that didn’t boo them if they lost a game or put up banners denouncing their captains.
Everyone was behind Leicester, and that is what made them a success. A team like Chelsea can have an owner with over ten billion dollars, but it means nothing if they hire a fickle coach like José Mourinho or if they have a player like Eden Hazard who loses all desire to play for his team. Atletico Madrid is proving this in La Liga, the Spanish soccer league with the undisputed two best teams in the world: Barcelona and Real Madrid. Atletico Madrid, a team with a squad value half the size of the other two teams’, is leading La Liga.
Without spending exorbitant sums of money, Leicester concentrated on a different style of play. It almost always scored on transition opportunities. It controlled the ball well. And, it applied an adaptation of Moneyball (Sabermetrics) to the sport of soccer, identifying undervalued players and acquiring them cheaply.
In a sport run by Russian business tycoons and members of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, watching a team like Leicester go against all odds and pull off the impossible is a breath of fresh air.
It proved that no matter how much money you can pump into a team, if there is no desire and no hunger to win, it is all just a waste.
