On the eve of the home match against Crystal Palace last weekend, the players and staff of Leicester City interrupted their final training session to stand in a circle and observe a minute’s silence in memory of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, whose 70-year reign had ended with his death a few days earlier. The following day, on the pitch at their stadium, they posed for a rather unusual pre-match team picture. Front and centre, held by their captain, Wes Morgan, was a large gold‑framed photograph of the monarch. The players were wearing black armbands. It was one of the strangest images in the history of English football – and, coming in the week of the first signs of a threat to the prosperity of the Premier League, perhaps one of the most significant.
In the six years since the Bangkok‑based duty-free magnate Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha bought the club, Leicester have gone from the lower reaches of the Championship to the Champions League, while acquiring a substantial following in Thailand. This is a great success story and probably not a single fan will begrudge the chairman’s decision to put himself – rather than, say, Claudio Ranieri – on the cover of the programme for their first Champions League match, or question the team’s public show of mourning for the late Thai king. To anyone outside the Leicester ranks, however, it might look a bit odd, even a bit uncomfortable, to see a 132-year-old English football club acknowledging its new allegiance so explicitly.
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