The acting editor of a weekly newspaper group has rubbished claims that Leicester City’s odds-defying title win is the “greatest sports story of them all”.
Ashley Booker, acting group editor at Johnston Press North Midlands, has hit out at what he termed “so-called experts” in an editorial on the website of the Derbyshire Times.
City became champions of England for the first time in their 132-year history after nearest challengers Tottenham Hotspur failed to beat Chelsea on Monday night.
They were given odds of 5000-1 to claim the Premier League title at the start of the season, leading to some pundits claiming the victory was the “greatest” sporting tale in history.
But Ashley, pictured, listed other achievements such as Manchester United winning the European Cup 10 years after the Munich disaster, Bob Champion winning the 1981 Grand National on Aldaniti after overcoming cancer and Formula One driver Niki Lauda returning to race just six weeks after surviving a near-fatal crash and suffering severe burns in 1976.
Ashley, a fan of Leicester’s local rivals Nottingham Forest, also mentioned his own club’s double European Cup victory in 1979 and 1980 among the “past glories” arguably deemed more worthy of the title.
He wrote: “All are great stories, as is Leicester’s, but for those describing Jamie Vardy and his pals as the greatest ever – please do me a favour.
“No, this is yet another example of people subscribing to the view that football began in 1992 when Sky Sports started bankrolling the so-called ‘beautiful game’. Everything else in the sporting world pre-1992 appears to have been airbrushed from history.
“So, while it’s great for football that a team like Leicester has broken the dominance of the so-called ‘big four’, please do not tell me it’s the greatest sports story of them all – because it isn’t.
“If the Foxes go on to win the Champions League next season (or the following season, like Forest), then I may entertain the idea that Leicester City Football Club’s achievements are the greatest ever. Until then, no.”
Meanwhile the Leicester Mercury, which brought out an on-the-day special edition yesterday to mark the Foxes’ triumph, continued its coverage of the celebrations today.
Today’s edition, with a front page headlined ‘Party Time,’ also included 20 pages of news and reaction to the historic title win.
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
Well said, that man! Exactly what his readers would want to hear and a useful reminder that football didn’t begin in 1992.
Report this comment
As a Rams fan, it pains me to agree with a Forest man, but he is spot-on, especially regarding this notion that nothing really counts before Sky got involved.
Report this comment
I don’t live in the Derby/Notts/E.Midlands patch and so don’t have the envy that non-Leicester fans must be feeling. But the piece did seem a bit mean-spirited to me, and wide of the mark factually (Niki Lauda getting back in a car a better sports story? Really?). But worse than that, it was poorly written. How many times did the so-called Group Editor use the term (lampooned all the time by Private Eye) “so-called”?
Report this comment
I can’t agree with Ashley. Leicester City being crowned Premier League champions is probably the greatest event ever, in the history and pre-history of everything, anywhere within the universe and what lies beyond (probably the sand in an egg-timer on a shelf in a kitchen in a house, in a town on a planet in another solar system in another universe…you get the idea!)
And, as someone who does not do hyperbole, I would also expect that had it happened on a non-Bank Holiday weekend when more journalists were at work and something reasonably newsworthy had happened somewhere it would still have got the massive coverage it did.
Report this comment
As HoldtheFrontPage is currently staffed by a Leicester fan, a United fan, and a neutral (me) who just tends to support the underdog, this has naturally been quite a topic of conversation in our office over recent days. So here, for what it’s worth, is my take on it.
Forest’s title win in 1978-79 under Cloughie was indeed a remarkable achievement, but they were the sixth different team to win the title in the space of nine years – Everton, Arsenal, Leeds, Derby and Liverpool being the others. By contrast, the Premier League has been won by the same four teams – Arsenal, Man Utd, Chelsea and Man City – for the past 21 years. The PL is far harder to win than the old First Division, and so purely in terms of domestic football, Leicester’s achievement in breaking through into that elite is unquestionably the greater one.
But of course Forest didn’t stop there, they went on to win the European Cup for the next two seasons. They were only the fourth different team to win the competition in a ten-year period that had seen it successively dominated by Ajax, Bayern Munich, and Liverpool. Forest’s achievement in breaking through to the European elite in that era therefore seems broadly on a par with Leicester’s PL win in the current one.
As for Man Utd winning the European Cup 10 years after Munich, well, that will always be one of the great emotional stories in sport, but it was hardly a shock. United had the best player in Europe at that time (Best) and several others who would have got into a combined European XI, so it would have been more of a surprise if they had lost to Benfica at Wembley (Sorry Mike!) By contrast, few had expected Celtic to beat Inter Milan the previous year with a team all drawn from within 30 miles of Glasgow. That is one footballing achievement that we can safely say will never be emulated.
Report this comment
That 68 European Cup win was more about the semi-final against Real Madrid than the final. Anyway, I’m not about to waste time on the words of someone who claims to be a ‘neutral’ when it comes to football. What a preposterous notion!
Report this comment
While those are impressive sustaining for nine months the accomplishments Leicester completed is much greater. I’d take this editorial with a grain of salt because of the clear and obvious bias of the editor.
Report this comment
Just a thought… If doctors, nurses (especially in war zones), scientists, medical researchers, frontline charity workers or indeed anybody that makes a positive physical difference to their communities were to be held up as role models instead of footballers then the world might just be a better place? And don’t get me started about the money spent on football perhaps being spent on a cure for illnesses, hunger, clean water etc. You get the picture…
Report this comment
When they have achieved more than what Forest did then yes, we can entertain the notion of what they have achieved as being the greatest.
One thing being swept under the carpet in this mass outpouring of worship is the way they cheated numerous local companies – including the NHS, when they went into Admin. Wonder if they paid them back now they are wallowing in riches
Report this comment
I don’t wish to sound as mean spirited as Ashley but the fact is Leicester won it in a season when all the ‘big boys’ were struggling. That won’t happen again as their manager, a nice man, has already said.
Maybe it isn’t the best sporting achievement ever but it’s a wonderful story.
Report this comment
While working at the Hull Daily Mail I ran the local half marathon after drinking four pints of Stella…does that count as a great sporting achievement?
Report this comment
I agree this got massively over-hyped, although a worthy achievement.
It’s not as if this is a Corinthian Casuals outfit. They are all tough well paid (more than doctors politicians etc) and in most cases experienced professional footballers.
The real story is the incredible failure of the rich clubs to come anywhere near them. A good team will always beat eleven good players, say I.
Surely the unheralded and old Ipswich team winning the league in the Sixties is up there, anyway. Memories are short for today’s younger journos, especially hysterical Sky.
Report this comment
Great achievement by them and even better than Forest’s given that they also won the League cup this year after scraping promotion on goal difference and will I am sure follow up with another league cup win…two European cups and a super cup…and they are bound to go more than a paltry 42 games unbeaten. So well done foxes!
Report this comment
The Huddersfield Examiner twice winning the Northern Media Football Cup against all the odds in the mid 90s is surely right up there
Report this comment
This provides the definitive answer…
http://www.footballfansknow.net/foxes-path-to-glory-started-in-barca
Report this comment
Very poorly written.
I’d also file it under: “Who cares what this guy thinks?”
Ignore and move on.
Report this comment
Worth pointing out that Forest won their trophies (and don’t forget Derby won the Championship twice in the 1970s) with British players, assembled largely through managerial skill as well as with the aid of reasonably open cheque books.
It makes me laugh when sports journalists go berserk over modern day football. When Manchester City played PSG in the recent Champions League match City had one British player – the goalkeeper, PSG were not particularly French either.
Crowds have changed too, and I suspect the majority of current fans would still go to matches to watch 22 robots play – as long as they were wearing the shirt and representing the ‘brand’.
The whole modern game at the top is simply a circus staffed by mercenaries. Leicester’s achievement is highly praiseworthy given their relative lack of resources, but they are not that much different in terms of nationality to the other Premiership sides.
Long live non-league football!
Report this comment
One daft sod on radio was saying the whole world was celebrating the Foxes win. I bet they were going wild in Mongolia.
But it was a refreshing change from the mega-mouthed money-soaked clubs of mercenaries who usually mop it up.
Report this comment
The Leicester City story is the best I can recall in a lifetime following sport.
Why? Because it was a genuinely global phenomenon watched by hundreds of millions of people embracing scores of cultures, and carried a powerfully resonant message for all – that the little guy can beat a whole gang of big guys with the right level of courage, commitment, self-belief, teamwork and luck.
Its appeal transcended sport because the sub-text was relevant to everyone, whatever their calling, offering hope in seemingly hopeless situations, and reaffirming the notion that money doesn’t always buy success.
Even football-haters were transfixed by the drama in Leicester’s unlikely climb to international super-stardom. Nearly every football fan on earth wanted to see little Leicester live their dream.
Any journalist who doesn’t appreciate such a story needs to seek a new career. Borough librarian, perhaps?
Report this comment
The idea of Leicester winning the Chumps Cash-Cow League next year is as preposterous as the idea of them winning the Premiership. I’m far from believing football started in 1992. The reason the game has been ruined since then is that the escalating financial chasm between the big clubs and teams like the Foxes make it impossible for the latter to finish any higher than fifth. I’m no expert but I don’t think any of the other greatest sporting upsets stated trump what Ranieri achieved this year. I think you’re just indulging in the temptation umpteen post-30-year-olds face in loudly decrying: “It’s not like it was in my day…”
Report this comment
Believe me, sports journos tend to exaggerate. I should know because I was one for 25 years.
Report this comment