One down, 12 matches to go. “Impossible,” says Claudio Ranieri and the Leicester City manager may well be right when he rules out the prospect of the English champions being crowned kings of Europe, but the first step on a long road to the final was taken with the minimum of fuss on a balmy evening in Belgium.
The phrase ‘dream start’ barely does it justice as Leicester’s inaugural Champions League match turned into a belated extension of their title celebrations, with Ranieri’s players cantering to a victory that was every bit as comfortable as the scoreline suggests. “Don’t take me home, please don’t take me home,” chanted the Leicester supporters, presumably in between rubbing their eyes at the madness of it all.
Leicester, it is worth remembering, had played only eight matches in Europe across their 132-year history. They had won just two of them, against Northern Ireland’s Glenavon. Now there is a third to add to the collection and, on the evidence of their performance against Brugge, there will be a few more victories racked up by the time the group stage comes to an end in Porto in early December.
What happens beyond then is anyone’s guess. It takes a fair leap of faith to imagine that Leicester could reach the final at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on 3 June and go on to win the competition, with a desperately disappointing Brugge side no barometer for what lies ahead in the Champions League. Yet nobody was gazing into the future in Brugge.
It was all about the here and now, cherishing a moment in history, for the Leicester players as well as the supporters. Only three of Ranieri’s starting XI had featured in the Champions League before – Robert Huth, Christian Fuchs and Islam Slimani, the club-record signing who was making his Leicester debut. For Jamie Vardy, Danny Drinkwater, Wes Morgan, Riyad Mahrez and Luis Hernández, this was the first time any of them had featured in a club match in any European competition.
As they stood shoulder to shoulder listening to the Champions League anthem a few minutes before kick-off, it was tempting to wonder how they would react. Stage fright, it soon became clear, was not going to be a problem. By half-time Leicester were two goals to the good and the 1,400 travelling fans located in the upper tier, in the far corner of the stadium, were going through their full repertoire of songs, as they had been for most of the day.
The market square in Brugge must have done a brisk trade on a glorious afternoon. Leicester supporters had decamped en masse, draping flags across various bars and pubs while singing their favourite song: ‘We’re all going on a European tour.’ One fan, in his early twenties, pointed to the Champions League emblem on the sleeve of his Leicester shirt and said he wanted it stitched on to show his grandchildren one day, to prove that it really happened.
Maybe it will be a one-off for Leicester this season. Perhaps the sequel to the fairy tale will come to an end long before that date in the Welsh capital. Whatever happens, though, Leicester look like a team intent on enjoying themselves in the Champions League and determined to play with the same confidence and freedom that characterised their remarkable title triumph.
What a moment it was for Marc Albrighton, who scored Leicester’s first Champions League goal. Discarded by Aston Villa a little over two years ago, the winger wrote his name into the history books when he turned home from inside the six-yard box after Hernández’s long throw had caused consternation in the Brugge area. Back in Birmingham Villa were hosting Brentford in the Championship. A penny for the thoughts of those at Villa Park who felt that Albrighton was no longer good enough to play for them.
When Mahrez added a second, with a glorious free-kick just before the half-hour, it was hard to see a way back for Brugge and, at the same time, impossible not to smile at the narrative that was unfolding. Leicester, those 5,000-1 outsiders who had the audacity to win the Premier League last season, were now coasting in Europe’s premier club competition.
Mahrez, who dispatched a penalty kick in the second half to kill the game, was excellent, back to his imperious best after a slightly flat start to the season. Vardy was also a constant threat, with his pace in behind drawing fouls that led to both of Mahrez’s set-piece goals, and Slimani, with his powerful presence, showed some encouraging signs as he linked up well with the England striker.
Brugge, in fairness, were benign opponents in what looks like a comfortable group for Leicester, yet something similar was said about Blackburn Rovers’ opponents when the draw was made back in 1995. Ray Harford’s side, who were the English champions at the time, finished rock bottom of a group that included Spartak Moscow, Rosenborg and Legia Warsaw, with a solitary victory to their name. Leicester will surely fare much better.
