Leicester City. Leicester City? Who are Leicester City? You will be forgiven for scratching your head and asking yourself this question. Unless you are an avid follower of the English Premier League, England’s top tier soccer league, then you may not be aware of this team. In fact, even casual followers of the Prem who have not checked up on the league recently may not be in the know. I mean Leicester (pronounced Less-ter), otherwise known as The Foxes after the animal that is emblazoned on the team crest, are not exactly a household name. They are not Manchester City, or Liverpool, or Arsenal, or Chelsea, or (dare I say it) Manchester United (*coughs and spits on the ground). However this is what makes their meteoric rise to the dizzy heights of the Premier League summit quite so…well…meteoric.

To put this in context we need to roll back the clock a year and two months. It is folklore in the English game that the two clubs that are top and bottom of the league at Christmas will go on to win the title and be relegated respectively. On December 25^th 2014 Leicester City F.C. were indeed the bottom team in the league and were staring down into the wild abyss that is The Championship (the second tier in the English Football League system). They had only 13 points, had scored only 17 goals, and had conceded a whopping 31 goals. Somewhere a switch was flipped. Since then Leicester have been on a remarkable run of form that not only saved them from seemingly certain relegation last season but has catapulted them to the top of the English Premier League this season.  At this point they have 53 points and have scored an amazing 48 goals! To put this into NFL, MLB, and NBA terms it is like last year’s worst teams (the Cleveland Browns, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Minnesota Timberwolves) topping their respective divisions and being favorites to go on and win the Super bowl, World Series, and NBA Championship respectively. It is a fairytale.

What makes this story even more remarkable, and the thing that makes every football fan want Leicester to win the league (if their own team can’t that is), is that they have done it with very little financial investment. In the fickle world of professional sports it is often proven correct that the teams with the most money are the most successful. This has been seen recently in the Premier League with both Chelsea and Manchester City receiving massive foreign financial investment enabling them to attract the biggest players and pay exorbitant transfer fees thus propelling them to the title. This is not the case with Leicester. In fact, in 2002 the club was in danger of going into financial administration due to lack of money and players had to take pay cuts and non-playing staff were laid off.

However, since then Leicester have had their own foreign takeover when billionaire Thai businessman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha took over the club in 2010. From that moment forward  the club has gone from strength to strength.  Leicester City’s biggest and seemingly most important financial expenditure of recent times was the purchase of Algerian midfielder Riyad Mahrez in 2014. Mahrez (25) was purchased for a mere 350,000 pounds ($495,000) and has 14 goals and 10 assists this season. By comparison, Raheem Sterling, who plays in a similar midfield position as Mahrez, was purchased by Manchester City for 49 million pounds ($76 million) and currently has 5 goals and 2 assists.

The managerial magic of new coach Claudio Ranieri, whose appointment was vastly criticized across the footballing world, and the record breaking season of Leicester’s English striking sensation Jamie Vardy should also not go without mention. Ranieri is characterized as a bit of a journeyman in footballing managerial terms. He has managed 16 different teams across Europe in his 28 year career and has little in the way of top flight titles and championships to show for it. His last managerial position as the coach of the Greek national team was prematurely ended after just four games with no wins. Ranieri is being credited though with clever tactical play and the fostering of a team spirit and sense of belief that can carry the Foxes all the way to the Premier League title.  A man who is clearly buying in to what Ranieri is selling is striker Jamie Vardy.  At the start of the season Vardy crushed former Manchester Utd striker Ruud Van Nistelrooy’s record by scoring in 11 consecutive Premier League games and he is currently the top scorer with 19 goals. Prior to this season Vardy and Mahrez were practically unheard of and now they are two of the top five goal scorers in the league with 33 goals between them. That is the same number of goals as the entire Manchester United team combined has been able to score this season.

Everyone loves an underdog and that is what makes this story so endearing. A rag tag bunch of misfits and players who were considered surplus to requirements at other clubs have been thrown together at little cost under the tutelage of an unfancied manager who is realistically on his last chance. Through team work, work ethic, and unwavering self-belief they are defying the odds and battling the money wielding rich behemoths of the footballing world. This is why football fans across the world are holding their breath and crossing their fingers in the hope that The Foxes in this fairytale get their happy ever after.