Football · 2016 · England
5000-to-1
Priced at 5000-to-1 and fighting relegation twelve months earlier, Leicester City are champions of the Premier League.
5000-1
Pre-season title odds
14th
League finish, prior season
10 clear of 2nd
Points won by
Leicester City stayed in the Premier League in the 2014-15 season by seven points, and only after winning seven of their last nine games. Bookmakers made them 5000-to-1 for the title the following year, longer than the odds several of them were simultaneously offering on entirely fictional events.
Claudio Ranieri built the side around Jamie Vardy, a striker playing non-league football only five years earlier, and Riyad Mahrez. They led the table for most of the season and were confirmed as champions on 2 May 2016 without kicking a ball, when second-placed Tottenham drew with Chelsea.
English top-flight football has not produced another season like it, and few team sports anywhere have: a title taken not by one of the small group of wealthy clubs that usually share them, but by a team that had spent the previous spring trying not to go down.
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