Surely this is already one of the greatest football stories for years?
Last Christmas, Leicester City were sitting stone last in the Premier League; they were playing some attractive attacking football at the time but nothing seemed to be coming off and it looked as if they were certain to be relegated.
It was sad to see a team that had just been promoted suffer the consequences of playing a brand of risky attacking football. It confirmed the conservative belief that smaller clubs with less financial muscle should stay in their place, defend deep, and ride out the season in the hope that showing enough fight will somehow keep them up.
Leicester fans must have been very tired of hearing Nigel Pearson’s post-match interviews at that point: “We were the better team, I don’t know how we lost that.”
But they stuck to their guns, and at Christmas 2015 they sat at the very top of the league, two points above a star-studded Arsenal side.
In England, goal-scoring freak Jamie Vardy is largely credited for their ridiculous change in fortunes, but two players that have been just as important, if not more so, to their splendid performances this year come from Africa...well, sort of!
Riyad Mahrez was born in France, and Jeff Schlupp in Germany, we're recognising the Algeria and the Ghana internationals among Goal's African People of the Year following their sublime contributions to an unforgettable year.
Schlupp doesn’t get as much attention as his Algerian colleague but his performances for the Foxes over the last few years have helped them gain promotion, avoid relegation, and now challenge for the league title.
At just 22, he has already notched up four full seasons at the club, and has featured heavily in all of them. He was linked with a move to Arsenal during the summer, having begun to prove that he is a player capable of featuring for one of the league's giants.
His ball control at high speed has made him an important part of Claudio Raneiri’s plans so far this season, and Schlupp remains integral to the lethal counter-attacking style that they have employed. An average pass-completion rate for the season of just 74 percent will not match up to other players in his position at the top few clubs, but his direct running in the channels more than compensates for that.
Schlupp mixes his movement up with a great ability to overlap in wide areas, and while he may not pick up as many goals as his more celebrated teammates, they are of the highest quality when they do arrive.
Mahrez is just a joy to watch, cutting in from wide areas, bamboozling defenders down the line or running in behind. He has it all!
He has a more ball-orientated approach than Schlupp, probably because his lightning fast feet allow him to play closer to opposition defenders. With seven assists and 13 goals in the league so far this season, one would have thought that the league’s coaches would have come up with a plan for him by now.
However, between him and Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil, it seems that no one can figure out what they will do next. The two playmakers have, throughout the year, established themselves as the league’s most unpredictable and effective stars, and are both just a joy to watch.
This season’s EPL Player of the Year will most surely come down to these two masters of the game, and the fact that the Algerian is probably just about winning the race says a great deal.
His innovation is coupled with a ruthlessness in front of goal. It has made him one of the most sought-after players in the world, but more importantly, it has taken a small relegation or doomed club to the top of the league in the space of a year.
Mahrez's progress from peripheral figure to world-class player is remarkable, and his role in the Foxes' fairytale year cements him as one of the continent's genuine stars.
Source: Goal.com