At this point it’s safe to assume that Leicester City are going to make the UEFA Champions League next season. They need to pick up just eight points over their last seven games to get it done. Considering they’ve been the most consistent team in the league all year, qualification for the Champions League is now a matter of when, not if.
Once next year rolls around and Leicester starts playing in the Champions League, we all agree that they are going to come back down to earth and crash out though right?
Well why do we think that?
All season long we’ve been doubting Leicester City’s title charge. It started with, well it’s early and they haven’t played all the big teams yet. Then it moved to “let’s see them get through the festive period.” Followed by waiting for them to get through a Liverpool, Manchester City, and Arsenal stretch in February. Finally it was, well let’s see how they play now that they’re expected to win.
At every point this season, Leicester has been proving the doubters wrong. Now that they are near locks for the Champions League, the doubters have moved on to next season. Haven’t we learned a lesson by now? Are Leicester really just going to crash out of the group stage next year?
The answer is not likely.
If Leicester go on to do the damn thing and win the Premier League, they’ll automatically be placed into “Pot 1” for the Champions League group stage draw. That pot features the champions from the top eight UEFA co-efficient nations. That means they’ll be in the same pot, and therefore unable to be drawn against, teams like Barcelona, PSG, Bayern Munich, and Juventus assuming they all hang on to win their respective leagues.
“Pot 2” would likely consist of the remaining English and Spanish teams as well as Borussia Dortmund. Since they can’t be drawn against the English teams that would increase their chances of drawing either Real Madrid or Dortmund, but that’s only one team and two teams advance to the knockout stage.
The remaining teams in Pot’s 3 and 4 aren’t exactly scary. Sure AS Roma was in Pot 3 last year while Borussia Monchengladbach and Wolfsburg were in Pot 4. Drawing those teams would make the group considerably harder but the odds of getting an easier draw are far better. Sevilla, Olympicacos, Galatasaray are three teams that were in Pot 3 last season. Dinamo Zagreb, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Malmo, and Astana were all clubs in Pot 4. Those teams wouldn’t even scare a mid-table Premier League team. Leicester City have far more resources to compete then all these teams
The main reason people are doubting Leicester is the belief that they will be gutted of all their top players this summer. If this was five years ago, or even maybe last year, that would certainly be true, but the economics of the English game have changed and this is a new ballgame.
With the new TV contract kicking in next year, if Leicester win the Premier League they will take home around £91 million in TV money. That’s before they get any Champions League money, and before they even count the money from ticket sales or jersey sales this season (they sold a lot of those).
Leicester doesn’t need that money to go out and buy superstars, they simply need to hold on to the ones they have. With that £91 million, Leicester could easily give a big fat new contract to Jamie Vardy and an even bigger one to Riyad Mahrez. English players tend to not leave the country so when you think about it, where exactly is Jamie Vardy going to go? Certainly not Chelsea who won’t be playing in the Champions League next year. Holding on to Mahrez is certainly the bigger priority.
After they lock Vardy and Mahrez down to new contracts, Leicester could use the remaining money to simply sign depth for the added matches. But it’s not as many added matches as you think. Fixture congestion for Premier League sides doesn’t really come into play until the festive period in late December, which is after the group stage has concluded.
When the group stage is played during the early part of the season the schedule is actually remarkably spread out. Champions League match around every other week, a League Cup match comes once a month (and Leicester will mail that in at the earliest opportunity) and an international break every three weeks.
That’s certainly not enough matches to wear down Leicester’s smaller squad early in the season. And remember they’ll be playing against teams that are inferior to mid-table Premier League teams. It’s certainly not unfathomable that Leicester will be one of the top two teams in their group.
I can’t tell you how far Leicester will go in the Champion League next season. What I can tell you is that when the knockout round commences in February 2017, I expect Leicester City to be there.
