The Fosse Way

On Friday night, Leicester City Football Club snuck out the news they had restored their front-of-shirt sponsor partnership with BC.Game, a crypto casino company unlicensed in the UK. 

On Saturday night, Leicester City Football Club were booed off the pitch after drawing 1-1 against Portsmouth with the team finishing the game containing Boubakary Soumare, Patson Daka, Jordan Ayew and Bobby Decordova-Reid.

Both off the field and on it, the past 36 hours have been a chastening reminder we are still stuck in the same doom loop that has taken us from winning major trophies and playing in Europe to being level on points with West Brom and Millwall.

In a joint statement with Union FS and, startlingly for the club, Foxes Pride, the Foxes Trust responded to the news of BC.Game’s return by quoting the results of their supporter survey this summer: 78% felt having BC.Game on the shirt was the wrong decision.

Watching the less-than-terrorising duo of Ayew and Reid trundle around to no effect again last night, thoughts turned instead to the 88% who disagreed the club was performing well when it came to player recruitment.

Friday night’s news and Saturday night’s game are inextricably linked. Let’s remind ourselves of Steve Menary and Philippe Auclair’s article for Josimar from July this year:

“BC.GAME had to suspend its UK operation in November 2024 and the company that had provided that licence, which enabled the company to sponsor Leicester, TGP Europe, had to leave the British market in May 2025 after a Great Britain Gambling Commission (GBGC) investigation.”

In February, the GBGC warned a number of football clubs about taking sponsorship from illegal betting companies. Although Leicester City was not one of those clubs named specifically by the GBGC, the commission’s head of enforcement John Pierce said: “It is essential that football clubs play their part in protecting fans and GB consumers who may be exposed to advertising of these sites through their sponsorship arrangements from harm or exploitation.”

What makes BC.GAME particularly egregious is that unlike other Asian-facing sports betting operators, BC.GAME took on British customers and carried on doing so even after having its licence revoked by the Great Britain Gambling Commission.”

So imagine the surprise when, after what had been a promising first half with Jordan James and Aaron Ramsey providing the probing runs Leicester had lacked earlier in the season, the big screens at either end of the pitch showed advertisements for BC.Game.

Why? For the large contingent of overseas fans who had travelled in their numbers to watch us play Portsmouth on a Saturday night?

“Josimar also identified active websites which have been set up to circumvent geo-blocking and enable customers to access the operator from jurisdictions where BC.GAME is banned, including the United Kingdom.”

The big screens then rattled through another couple of adverts for other gambling companies, before staging their own protest at what they had been forced to display and comically freezing in the 87th minute on an image of a Portsmouth player receiving a yellow card. After a call to the IT helpdesk, someone eventually turned them off and on again to notify us we had 90 more seconds of time in which to conjure a late winner.

There was a golden chance to do just that, but it fell to Luke Thomas, one of many players who has ended up being selected by default simply by hanging around long enough. We ended the game captained by another, Hamza Choudhury, a substitute alongside four more in Soumare, Daka, Ayew and Reid. More than half the team merely the leftovers from the disastrous summer transfer windows of 2022 and 2024 or mediocre Academy output. And that’s not even including Wout Faes.

The team news had been promising, Aaron Ramsey and Julian Carranza in for Reid and Daka. But the world-weary among us were already looking at the bench and realising, with the Wrexham debacle fresh in our minds and two away games coming up over the next seven days, we would have to be two or three goals up by the hour.

In fact, the Portsmouth equaliser came two minutes before the hour and the introduction of Daka and Reid a minute later was a response rather than the catalyst.

Leicester had 12 shots in the first half to Portsmouth’s one and led 1-0 at the break through the kind of goal we’ve craved, a close-range Ramsey tap-in – albeit impressively acrobatic – a goal created through great football rather than the great individual goals we’ve been relying on so far this season.

But the shot map told the real story. For all the good play and dominance, Ramsey’s was the only clear chance created. Everything else was potshots and hit-and-hopes. Carranza had started in lively fashion, threatening to get in behind twice in the first two minutes with clever runs, but his weak blocked shot in the second minute remained his sole attempt at goal.

There are problem positions all over the pitch as well as a clear lack of depth, but the striker issue is the biggest. None of the current candidates look like they’ll score even 5 league goals never mind reaching double figures.

It is now 39 games for club and country without a goal for Patson Daka. He has only scored once since February 2024. You would think that a striker who’s been on the pitch for over 1,000 minutes since the start of last season would manage to score more than once just due to the inherent random nature of football.

The most alarming thing is that Daka is probably still our best option up front purely through his ability to stretch defences and create space for others. Carranza’s audition had its moments but he doesn’t look quick or sharp enough to be effective in this setup. Perhaps he will improve over time.

There are problems elsewhere too. Faes and Thomas were as effective as holograms in trying to prevent Portsmouth’s equaliser, while the drop-off in performance from our midfield from the first half to the second set the scene for the visitors to draw level.

We haven’t had a shortage of different managers trying to get a tune out of Daka, Soumare, Faes, Vestergaard, Skipp, Reid, Ayew, Choudhury, Thomas and co. Cifuentes is merely the latest to give it a go. But we’ve heard him say hundreds of times already that he’s a “big believer in the Academy”. 

With the likes of Ben Nelson, Olabade Aluko, Jake Evans and Louis Page all consigned to the Under 21s – or, in Nelson’s case, no football at all – you have to question whether Cifuentes is all talk and no action when it comes to promoting young players. Even Jeremy Monga is an enforced starter due to Stephy Mavididi’s injury and the lack of any other wingers.

The underlying problem when it comes to supporting Leicester City at the moment is much bigger than all of these things. They’re contributing factors to a wider sense that none of this matters as much as it did in the past. 

There were empty seats last night in areas that are usually always full. You speak to people who have been passionate about this club for decades and they talk about watching home games on TV rather than bothering to go down to the ground, or switching off a Leicester-related podcast halfway through after getting bored, or simply forgetting Leicester were playing and finding out the result the next morning.

When you do go to the game, there are players who get booed simply for running onto the pitch, while the away end is openly laughing at our vocal support. People disappear from the stands at random intervals throughout the game and many don’t even come back.

This is the effect of the same old faces populating the director’s box and the pitch as things slowly deteriorate. The most insane thing is that we are still 4th in the division and things could be looking up with a few wins in a row. Last night didn’t have that feel though. Last night felt like a perfect summary of where this club has gone horribly, horribly wrong.