Roger Alton Roger Alton

A triumph for brutality

Plus: why Jamie Vardy: The Movie is having script problems, and the dazzling dancers of the Indian Premier League

issue 30 April 2016

It’s always good to see a great con trick in action. Take Boris Johnson: not really the lovable quick-witted scamp with a good line in Latin gags and a few problems in the trouser department, but a ruthless opportunist with a dreadful attitude to women and a strong line in extreme rudeness to visiting presidents. Not what he seems at all. I’m beginning to feel the same about Leicester City.

Wonderful story and all that: fairy-tale, Jamie Vardy, blah blah. Enough already. ‘Uncle’ Claudio Ranieri has brilliantly and charmingly pulled the wool over our eyes with his free -pizzas and ‘dingly-dong, dingly-dong’ stuff about waking up dozy players, all done in a comedy Italian accent straight out of a 1950s Sophia Loren flick. The reality is that Leicester are clearly the biggest bunch of lump-it-long, kick ’em high players since Billy Bremner’s Leeds circa 1972. And everybody knows it. They walloped a dismal Swansea at the weekend and at one point their powerful, speedy midfielder Jeffrey Schloop raced down the left, roared past a hapless Swansea defender and duly made the second goal.

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