Foxes' success will never be bettered, says Neil Humphreys
Leicester's title triumph will never, ever be topped in the history of sport
Playboy owner Hugh Hefner is still a virgin. Simon Cowell will be the next British Prime Minister and Elvis works at the local supermarket.
Anything is possible. Insanity reigns. Logic belongs to yesterday because today belongs to Leicester City.
The world wakes to a dream. It's a glorious, delirious, dreamy reality that falls somewhere between fantasy and farce.
British bookmakers had greater faith in Hefner, Cowell and Elvis than they did the Foxes. The odds were shorter.
According to the bookies, there really was more chance of Elvis lifting cardboard boxes at a supermarket than Wes Morgan lifting the English Premier League trophy.
Just 12 punters backed Leicester to win the league before the season started at those infamous odds of 5,000 to 1 as we all waited for the inevitable fall.
Claudio Ranieri, the pizza-loving, bell-ringing favourite uncle, playing the fool for the cameras but crazy like a fox for his footballers, spoke often of Leicester's 40-point target.
But something funny happened on the way to Premier League survival. As the Foxes fought a relegation battle, they accidentally won the title.
And, in doing so, they slipped away with the finest upset, perhaps even the greatest achievement, in the history of sport.
Oh, there will be naysayers and sceptics who will pull out a Boris Becker or a Buster Douglas, the high-flying Greece at Euro 2004 or the Japanese South African slayers at the Rugby World Cup to suggest otherwise. But context is king.
Buster Douglas' odds of defeating Mike Tyson back in 1990 were still only 42-to-1 and for good reason.
Individual sports simplify matters; man against man always offers hope for the underdog. Just a single slip can take of business.
But team sports pose too many imponderables, too many moving parts on uneven playing fields, like multi-ball mayhem on a pinball machine, exciting to watch, often impossible to control.
The Greeks pulled off the impossible at Euro 2004, emulating the Great Danes of 1992 by downing the Goliaths that stood between them and immortality.
But they prevailed at knockout tournaments, sustaining their remarkable form long enough to outlast opponents for a month; a flurry of sharp shocks that endure forever.
CONSISTENCY
Leicester's fairy-tale has been written in consistent, captivating chapters for the best part of a year. The narrative never wavered, nor suffered a dip in quality.
Like an engrossing novel, the Foxes carefully captured the world's imagination and refused to let go, with each unlikely cliffhanger proving more ludicrous and more sensational than the last.
They stretched the boundaries of credibility sometime after Christmas, but refused to revert to the underdog's cliche, wallowing in pitiful tears and winning a nation's hearts by losing the race.
They would not break.
In the end, they became familiar to millions. Their flaws only made them more attractive, more identifiable.
When aspiring footballers watch Lionel Messi, they see who they want to be. But when they watched Leicester, they saw who they could be.
From non-league journeyman to Hollywood subject, Jamie Vardy wrote the ending for his upcoming movie with a title-winning party at his home yesterday morning (Singapore time).
Perhaps it was a trick of the eye, but the shaky phone camera footage showed not detached, deluded multi-millionaires floating away on Planet Football, but regular, appreciative guys celebrating their sporting miracle.
UNBELIEVABLE
In the brief clip, Vardy, Riyad Mahrez, Robert Huth, Wes Morgan and Shinji Okazaki, all huddled together, arm in arm, lost in the moment. They looked just like you and me.
They couldn't believe it either.
A team that had spent 140 days marooned at the bottom of the table last season, that nearly went out of business in 2002 and have spent less money in their entire 132-year existence than Manchester United in the last two years, had won a league they were simply not allowed to win.
The EPL was founded in 1992 to make rich clubs even richer and proved to be phenomenally successful, producing only five champions before yesterday morning.
Four were grotesquely wealthy piggy banks and the other was Blackburn Rovers, who were briefly wealthy in a poorer league 21 years ago.
Until yesterday morning, the EPL was a closed shop; a private members club with no riff raff allowed, except through the service entrance to hand over three points to a self-satisfied elite gorging at the global cash buffet.
But Leicester's glorious commoners have spectacularly gate-crashed the party and kicked out the aristocracy.
The insurrection may be temporary, but it really doesn't matter.
The Foxes' unique achievement will never be surpassed.
WHAT THEY SAY
"I just think it's generally the biggest sporting shock. There were no odds that I would have taken at the start of the season. You could have given me 10 million to one and I'd have said, 'Nah, it's a waste of a quid'."
- Former Leicester striker Gary Lineker, who will have to present an episode of Sky Sports' Match of the Day next season in his underwear following a pledge made on Twitter
"I don't think anything betters this. I was a massive sceptic of Claudio Ranieri. I didn't think they could win it, but they've proved me and a lot of people wrong."
- Former Leicester midfielder Robbie Savage
"I think there's no doubt that is the greatest achievement in the history of our game. Football had become a closed shop with the same teams winning year after year and you never believed a story like this could happen, but it has and you just think what that could do for the rest of football now and if it could change and you could see more of this more often."
- Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher
OTHER SPORTING MIRACLES
1 Nottingham Forest (1977-78)
The idea of a newly promoted team securing the English top-tier title seemed absurd, but Forest achieved it in 1978.
Under Brian Clough, they finished third in the Second Division the season before, ahead of Bolton and Blackpool by just a point. But, led by Martin O'Neill, Peter Shilton, Peter Withe and John McGovern, they took the title by seven points ahead of Liverpool.
It was a season where Leicester finished bottom. Forest also won the League Cup that season and, a year later, became champions of Europe.
2 Muhammad Ali (1974)
Ali's refusal to be drafted for the Vietnam War had meant a three-year exile from boxing in what should have been his prime years.
On his return, he lost to Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, meaning nobody but Ali (above) himself thought he could beat the fearsome George Foreman, who had dismantled Norton and Frazier both inside two brutal rounds. But Ali's "rope-a-dope" tactics in the "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire saw him knock out an exhausted Foreman in the eighth round and win back the heavyweight title at the age of 32.
DANISH DELIGHT: Denmark celebrating their surprise success. PHOTOS: ACTION IMAGES
3 Denmark (Euro '92)
Given a week's notice to put a squad together when Yugoslavia were barred from the 1992 European Championship because of civil war, the Danes - who had been runners-up to the Yugoslavs in qualifying - were given little hope.
A 0-0 draw against England and defeat by hosts Sweden did little to dispel the notion, but a 2-1 win over fancied France put them into the semi-finals and they squeaked past Holland on penalties.
The might of world champions Germany awaited in the final but Denmark rode their luck, with goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel proving impregnable and goals from John Jensen and Kim Vilfort taking the team that had failed originally to qualify for the tournament to the most unlikely of victories.
4 Boris Becker (Wimbledon 1985)
In June 1985, a fresh-faced 17-year-old from Germany won the grass-court Grand Slam's traditional warm-up at Queen's Club in London and he was dubbed a "future Wimbledon champion" by the media.
Little did they realise the prediction would come true only three weeks later.
Unseeded and, with many of his early matches going largely unnoticed on outside courts, Becker (above) battled to the final where he overcame Kevin Curren.
The South African had conquered both Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe in earlier rounds but couldn't cope with the teenager's confidence and fearless approach, as Becker won the first of his three titles at the All-England Club 6-3, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4.
5 Bob Champion (Grand National 1981)
English jump racing jockey Bob Champion (above) was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1979 and given between six and eight months to live. But he opted to endure the then new and painful chemotherapy treatment and was remarkably back in the saddle a year later.
He had long believed that Aldaniti had the potential to win the "world's greatest steeplechase" over the gruelling four-and-a-half miles of Aintree's famous course, despite the horse being treated for a variety of injuries almost constantly.
Their partnership and victory in the 1981 Grand National was one of pure emotion and inspired the movie Champions in which John Hurt starred as the jockey. Now 67, Champion continues to work tirelessly to raise money for cancer research. - Wire Services.
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