Ten years ago, Leicester City won the Premier League at 5000-to-1 odds. They were the miracle. The underdog story that made grown men weep into their pints. They got an invite to secret parties. They were somebody.
Now they’re League One bound, which is the football equivalent of discovering your lottery-winning ticket was actually a grocery receipt.
The contrast is so violent it loops back around to being funny. These aren’t just any fallen giants—they’re the most fallen giants, the ones who peaked so spectacularly that the decline had to be equally theatrical. It’s not enough that they’re struggling. They had to go from the absolute summit to the third tier in a decade. Anything less would be artistically inconsistent.
The club’s social media team still posts throwback photos of that 2016 season like they’re curating a museum of their own obsolescence. “Remember when we were good?” they caption, each post a little knife wound. The fans remember. They remember the secret invites, the respect, the moment when Leicester City meant something beyond “oh, them.” They remember when being Leicester was enough.
Now it’s a cautionary tale wrapped in an absurdist comedy. Netflix is probably already making calls. The plot writes itself: one miraculous season, then a slow-motion car crash that somehow takes a decade to finish. It’s not tragedy. It’s too perfectly stupid to be tragedy. It’s just what happens when the universe decides to tell the world’s most elaborate joke at your expense.