A secret invite and other 'pinch-me' moments before Leicester woke up — SkimNews
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- Leicester City were reduced to League One this summer after back-to-back relegations, a decade on from winning the Premier League at 5,000-1 odds, with new manager Russell Martin tasked with an immediate Championship return.
- Claudio Ranieri held a private 45-minute audience with just eight handpicked British reporters at the club's Belvoir Drive training ground the day after the title was clinched in May 2016, after the world's media were packed into King Power Stadium.
- Ranieri built squad cohesion through unconventional off-field rituals, including taking players out for pizza after the first clean sheet of the season against Crystal Palace in October 2015, and briefly considered double training sessions before assistant Craig Shakespeare intervened.
- Nathan Dyer missed the title-clinching celebrations entirely, watching the Tottenham-Chelsea draw from hospital alongside wife Laura, who had given birth to their second child, Shea, two days earlier.
- W Archer & Son butchers created 'The Ranieri' sausage using Packington free-range pork, fennel, garlic and chilli, which won a Great Taste award and at peak sold 12kg (26.5lb) per day after the manager declared himself 'the sausageman.'
- Foxes Trust co-chair Lynn Wyeth placed a £2 bet on Leicester at 5,000-1 odds at the start of the season, won £10,000, and said it let her retire at 55 instead of 67 — though her account was temporarily frozen for money laundering before being cleared.
Why it matters: The anniversary piece lands at the starkest possible juncture: the same club that pulled off the most improbable title in football history now plays in League One, and the untold human details — a secret eight-person press invite, a player in a maternity ward, a butcher's sausage — show how deeply that 2015-16 season embedded itself in Leicester's civic identity, with the Ranieri sausage still occasionally on counters and a £2 bettor retired 12 years early.
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