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Tuesday 20 April 2021

Dreams being built and torn down

 Well what a week it has been for my beloved Leicester City.

On Sunday, the hallowed turf of Wembley Stadium, with 4000 so called neutral fans (although I did see a few blue shirts in there!), the mighty Foxes took on a good Southampton team in our first FA Cup semi-final since 1982. Unfortunately I am old enough to remember us losing that one to Spurs at Villa Park!!

King Kelechi once again came up with the goods in a tense and close affair, keeping his fantastic scoring run on the go with the only goal of the game. Jamie Vardy, in the midst of a goal drought, provided another assist, proving to the world that his overall game isn't just about running past the last defender and smashing the ball home. That is now 8 assists for him.

What it means is that for the first time in 52 years, Leicester have made the FA Cup final. Five years ago, we achieved an impossible dream by winning the Premier League, something that no Fox would have thought possible, so for years, our eyes have been fixed of the FA Cup as our prize. That hasn't changed. It is now the one domestic trophy that we have not won and it would be so special to achieve this dream.

However, as dreams are being made possible, they are also potentially being taken away from clubs like ours.

On Monday, the so-called Big Six of the Premier League, along with six other clubs from Spain and Italy, announced that they were breaking away from UEFA to form their own European Super League. As you can imagine, this has caused fury and anger across Europe as it would basically exclude most clubs from competing for the European honour, as it would be virtually a closed shop competition. All 12 founders would be guaranteed to compete each year, with a massive amount of money being invested by JP Morgan Investment banks as incentives.

As fans of the so-called lesser clubs, we see it as a cynical ploy to regain their grip on the top of the Leagues as clubs like Leicester have been closing the gap on them, and threatening their "privilege" of qualifying for the cash rich Champions League and Europa League spots.

There is already a nice compliment to my team going around twitter that ESL (as it is being monikered) actually stands for Ever Since Leicester, referring to the upset apple cart that the Foxes achieved by daring to win the Premier League with a team worth £35 million, as opposed to the hundreds of millions that the likes of Man City, Man Utd and Liverpool spend.

It will be an interesting few days as the Premier League, UEFA, FIFA and the other European Leagues sit down to discuss what action they will take against these clubs, and the players who represent them. Talk of international bans for the players, along with domestic bans for the clubs are being mooted.

Let's Keep the Faith that common sense prevails and the whole idea is scrapped.

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