Brugge vs Leicester: Foxes fans still pinching themselves after Champions League debut victory

If you dare question a Leicester City supporter’s dedication to the cause, they nearly always reel off the same riposte. Being crowned Premier League champions has enchanted new fans from across the globe but those who stuck out the “dark years” are very keen for you to know that they were at Yeovil away in 2009.

In just seven years, the East Midlands club have been transformed from one on the brink of extinction, in the third tier, to being in the rudest health of their 132-year history. The wide-eyed disbelief was still etched across their faces as a small cabal of Leicester supporters climbed aboard the 8.57am Eurostar departure from St Pancras on Tuesday morning.

The Champions League debut against Club Brugge just over 36 hours away is the reason why. Henry, from Ashby, was a season ticket holder at the old Filbert Street ground in the 1980s and 90s but fell out of love with the club after the millennium.

“It just felt like a different club for about ten years, not the one I supported as a kid,” he says, in between coffee and toilet breaks. “The soul was being slowly ripped out of the club, so many managers and owners came in but only lasted a few years. I still went down and, yeah, I was at Yeovil away but it felt like a chore most weeks. I never thought we’d see City back in the Premier League, yet alone win it.”

Leicester boast one of the most raucous atmospheres in Europe at their King Power Stadium home on the banks of the River Soar. However, during the “dark years” attendances fell to the low 20,000s and teams often left with three easily-collected points. It all changed when Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha bought the club from Milan Mandaric in 2010. Foreign investment breads cynicism in these uncertain times but the 59-year-old quickly endeared himself to the Leicester supporters.

The Thais went back to the future in securing Nigel Pearson, the manager who rescued Leicester from the potholes of League One, as first-team manager. Anjem, a businessman from Syston, echoes many of his peers in lauding Pearson as a club legend despite the acrimonious nature of his departure.

“He got us up from the Championship and kept us there,” he says. “That was his job description and he did it. Ask any City fan and they’ll tell you that he did a lot of the work on building the club up. Would we have won the League if not for Nige? I don’t think so.”

What happened next has been labelled everything from a modern day miracle to a fairy-tale. Claudio Ranieri, football’s nearly man, was appointed to keep the Foxes in the top-flight despite being made favourites to tumble back into the second tier. The Italian was too lightweight, too conservative, they said, and would struggle to replicate Pearson’s forte for man management.

Ranieri, in almost every sense, was the anti-Pearson. Charming, self-deprecating and unashamedly Italian. The Premier League title triumph that followed will remain one of the most romantic football fables in living memory. Nottingham Forest fans, mind you, are at pains to stress that Leicester are a couple of European Cup lifts away from matching their achievements in the 80s.

“We never want him to leave,” adds Sue, a waitress from Oadby. “If we built 20 statues in the city for him, it wouldn’t be enough. I was a bit wary after his appointment, I’ve got to be honest. It’s been an incredible year; I still pinch myself in the night. I’d be heartbroken if one of these days I actually wake up!”

Like many smaller clubs, supporters tend to recognise each other and exchange pleasantries. Sue knows Henry and Henry knows Anjem. European football’s elite competition is often enjoyed from afar, on television, but now Leicester’s battle hardened supporters are living it themselves. Perhaps more so than lifting the Premier League trophy, standing to attention to Le grandes equipes, the official Champions League anthem, must make them wonder whether they’ve slipped into an alternate universe.

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Leicester were given just 1,400 tickets for the jaunt to the Jan Breydel Stadion but many more travelled to Flanders. Some were even fortunate and wily enough to buy tickets on the door to sit in the home end. Luckily, the locals didn’t seem to mind much. Belgium, like much of the United Kingdom, is basking in a late summer heatwave. The Leicester fans, as such, were determined to saviour this junket to Bruges in the main square, just north of the Sint-Salvatorskathedraal.

The empty seats were baffling, for this was Brugge’s first campaign in the Champions League for over a decade, but that merely allowed the visiting contingent to dominate the song list for the night. They sung of Gary Lineker and Emile Heskey – a nod to the past – while confusing their Belgian hosts with a rendition of “we all dream of a team of Barry Hayles”. The former Jamaica international, who scored twice in 28 appearances for the Foxes in in 2008/09 is probably none the wiser of his cult status among Leicester's fans.

The new boys on the Champions League block emerged with three points, collected emphatically courtesy of Marc Albrighton’s opener and a Riyad Mahrez double. The press box in Bruges was located just above the VIP seats where Leicester’s youth team and guests of the club were sat. One tourist, too merry to give his name, turned back to the media bench. “Surely you’re enjoying this as much as us?” he said.