Leicester

Jamie Vardy was playing non-league football for Fleetwood Town when Leicester signed him in 2012; four years later he was the club's top scorer in a Premier League title no bookmaker had rated above 5,000/1. Claudio Ranieri built that 2015/16 season around him, around N'Golo Kanté breaking up play in midfield and Riyad Mahrez running at defenders, and Leicester held on to become champions of England for the first time.

The club started out in 1884 as Leicester Fosse, taking its current name in 1919 after the city itself was granted city status. The blue-and-white colours and the Foxes nickname have stayed since.

An FA Cup followed in 2021, and three League Cups had already been won, from 1964 to 2000. King Power Stadium, Leicester's home since 2002, holds 32,259.

What came after 2016 has been harder to place. A run to the Europa Conference League semi-final in 2022 gave way to relegation from the Premier League in 2023; Leicester came straight back up, with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall driving a Championship-winning campaign worth 97 points. The reprieve did not hold — a second Premier League relegation followed in 2024/25 under Ruud van Nistelrooy, and the club dropped into League One a season later, undone by financial breaches as much as results. Leicester became only the second English champion, after Portsmouth, to be playing in the third tier within ten years of the title.

Through it all, the record most fans reach for still belongs to Gary Lineker, an academy product who remains the club's all-time top scorer with 103 goals and the Golden Boot he won in 1985.