Hazzetta dello Sport 2024/25 - Issue 12: Leicester City v Chelsea
If you needed a fair assessment at where Leicester City are at this season, that the international break was welcome rather than an annoyance gives you your answer.
You know it felt so nice for a week or so without the melodrama. In fact this preview was originally written at length about how the lack of drama produces a dangerous apathy. The season is idling along, and a lot of shoulder-shrugging is occurring. Leicester City have yet to find their niche when it comes to style or identity.
The idea in employing Enzo Maresca last season was to establish a new footballing principle and there are attempts at adopting the orderly style now. However, it normally gives into a hybrid version to which Leicester are chasing a game after making a defensive error.
It’s entertaining and, to a point, endearing. Then along comes performances such as that at Old Trafford. It stunk in terms of personality and the scars of 2022/23 are relevant. Apathy now rules at King Power Stadium.
The talking heads have begun to comment; well-disguised defences by the likes of Robert Huth, Henry Winter and John Percy. You question how this has come about and as though the club are hoping to dictate opinion.
They consistently mention fans’ expectations. That’s a misreading. The expectations are not top ten or anything other than staying up. It’s an expectation of being something tangible and to be proud of. An expectation to be something.
Alas the drama was broken earlier this week when we awoke to a news article that BC.Game had been declared bankrupt in Curacao.
The actualities of that being a reality are rather more nuanced, but the headline was enough to understandably put fans into a tailspin. The anonymity of such a company always left a question mark in their ability to service the largest shirt sponsorship in the club’s history.
There was enough noise to prompt both club and sponsor to release statements. As opposed to examining word for word those releases, there’s a couple of particular points in the BC.Game statement which lead to unease. The claim pushing them to bankruptcy centres around the non-payment of their customers and the company’s defence largely deflected to trying to sully the lawyer’s reputation rather than admitting error on non-payment.
When you dwell on it, the actions of this week can translate into the creation of a mantra in existence at Leicester City. While the ambition is low, there is a feeling of doing just enough. The playing and corporate side mirror that.
Hire Steve Cooper with his appalling Premier League win record? Yeah, he will do. Odsonne Edouard as the badly needed striker loan signing? Yeah, he will do.
BC.Game, an unknown with a questionable gambling model; they will do for the shirt sponsorship. Announce a new matchday experience of new food outlets and local beers? Take the ‘street food’ add-on pack with your appointed caterers.
The aim is for City just to survive this season, scrape enough points together and avoid that FFP penalty which the EFL are so keen to implement. There is no language encouraged by the club to suggest this season is the ugly hard yards to build a foundation from which to re-establish ourselves. The planning is short term. There is no vision of how the club will look in three, five or ten years. As along as that remains the case (and a stadium extension sat on the shelf) questions will be asked of the dedication the existing owners are willing to show.
As we look towards Chelsea, Enzo Maresca in the Chelsea dugout will illustrate the lack of joined-up long-term thinking. It was always Enzo’s choice to leave and if a bigger club comes knocking then, yeah he was likely to depart. However his replacement in his footballing style is so much at odds that it’s the perfect example of how Leicester City are lacking major strategic nous.
The difficulty of Saturday lunchtime is that Maresca has Chelsea in the form that we showed over last Autumn. The players he possesses now get the idea and they are bought in. The football is being played at pace; players such as Nicolas Jackson and Moises Caicedo now look at ease rather than panicked. If they utilise pace in the often departed, empty channels of the Leicester defence, it’s going to be a painful lunchtime sitting.
Given the injuries and suspensions for the Foxes, there is a huge chance that either Jamie Vardy or Bobby De Cordova-Reid play with an injury or Kasey McAteer or Patson Daka start. It would not be mad to suggest some of the City support are hoping the anticipated weather forecast becomes even more troublesome. The long-term absence of Abdul Fatawu is really going to hurt when it comes to pure attacking menace and direct play.
It would be important to avoid being in touching distance of the bottom three after the outcome of the weekend’s games but equally a real result might be avoiding further injuries. If a full-back was to get injured, there would be a serious need to change formation while an injured striker would also see it difficult to look at a 3-5-2 formation. We await with bated breath but given the tifo, it would be excellent to get a really good start (an Achilles heel to Maresca teams) and give us something to fight for.
