Leicester City's 5000-1 Premier League Miracle 2016

Some stories football only dares to tell once a century. Leicester City's 2015-16 campaign is one of them: a club with no galacticos, the fifteenth-highest wage bill in the Premier League and pre-season odds of 5000-1 to win the title, ended up lifting the most coveted trophy in England. No bookmaker saw it coming. No pundit predicted it. And yet it happened, before the disbelieving eyes of the entire world.

From a relegation fight to the impossible dream

To measure the miracle you have to rewind one season. In 2014-15, Leicester sat bottom of the Premier League from November until April. They looked doomed. Then, under Nigel Pearson, they pulled off the so-called 'great escape': they won seven of their final nine games and collected more points than any other side in that closing run, surviving and finishing 14th. That late act of faith planted the seed of what was to come.

Nobody imagined that the same group, barely reinforced, would become a year later the most improbable champion in English football history. Leicester had never won a top-flight title: 132 years of waiting would be resolved in a single magical season, with only three defeats in the entire campaign.

Claudio Ranieri, the man nobody wanted

In the summer of 2015 the club turned to Claudio Ranieri to replace Pearson. The appointment was met with scepticism: the Italian arrived from a failed spell with the Greece national team and carried the nickname 'Tinkerman' for his habit of over-rotating his line-ups. Many predicted relegation. Ranieri did the opposite of what was expected: he simplified, gave the eleven stability, rewarded his players with pizza whenever they kept a clean sheet and built a bulletproof dressing room. His man-management proved as decisive as his tactics.

Vardy and the record nobody expected

Leicester turned their limitations into an identity. Without the ball they ran like no one else; with it, they killed teams on the counter in seconds. Jamie Vardy, a striker who only years earlier had been playing non-league football, wrote a slice of history: he scored in eleven consecutive Premier League matches between August and November 2015, breaking Ruud van Nistelrooy's record. The goal that broke the mark came on 28 November against Manchester United. He finished the season with 24 league goals and the writers' Footballer of the Year award.

• Final tally: 81 points, from 23 wins, 12 draws and only 3 defeats.
• Jamie Vardy: 24 goals and the record of scoring in 11 games in a row.
• Riyad Mahrez: 17 goals, 11 assists and PFA Players' Player of the Year.
• N'Golo Kanté: the league leader in tackles and interceptions.
• Wes Morgan and Kasper Schmeichel: the defensive backbone.
• Title won by a 10-point margin over the runners-up.

Mahrez and Kanté, the silent kings

Riyad Mahrez, signed from modest Le Havre, became the team's magician: 17 goals, 11 assists and the PFA Players' Player of the Year award, the first African ever to win it. Beside him, an unknown N'Golo Kanté covered the pitch as if two men were playing: he topped the Premier League for ball recoveries and tackles. Behind them, captain Wes Morgan and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel held together a defence that seemed impossible to breach. Every piece, cheap on paper, slotted into a perfect machine.

"“Dilly ding, dilly dong,” rang Ranieri's little bell at every training session; it was the sound of a group that played without fear and enjoyed every single match."

2 May 2016: champions without kicking a ball

The finale was as surreal as the whole tale. Leicester's fate was in their own hands, yet the title was sealed without their players setting foot on the pitch. On 2 May, Tottenham — their only pursuers — visited Chelsea at Stamford Bridge needing a win to stay alive. Spurs raced into a 2-0 lead through Harry Kane and Son Heung-min. It looked as if the race would stretch on. But Chelsea rallied: Gary Cahill pulled one back and, late on, Eden Hazard curled in a stunning strike for a final 2-2.

With that draw, the maths was done: Leicester City were mathematically champions of the Premier League. Curiously, Claudio Ranieri was not even in England: he had flown to Italy to have lunch with his 96-year-old mother. The players celebrated together at Vardy's house, watching the game on television, in one of the most heart-warming images sport has ever produced.

Why it was modern football's greatest miracle

The numbers explain the scale of the feat. Leicester won the title with a wage bill of around 80 million pounds, the fifteenth in the league, below even Aston Villa, who finished bottom. Giants such as Manchester City spent roughly three times as much. In an era when money seemed to have bought away every surprise, a small club proved that football still held room for the impossible. They became England's first brand-new champion since Nottingham Forest in 1977-78.

"It was no fluke and no stroke of luck: it was work, unity and courage. Leicester turned 5000-1 into the eternal symbol that nothing is ever written in stone."

Relive the miracle in Fut Simulator

Would Leicester have held on with a different fixture list? What if Tottenham had not collapsed at Stamford Bridge? In Fut Simulator you can relive and simulate that 2015-16 Premier League match by match, recreate the Foxes' campaign or throw them into tournaments and leagues to see how often they touch the sky again. Pick Ranieri's Leicester, simulate the season of the miracle and find out whether the wonder repeats itself. The story already happened once; now it is your turn to write it again.