'Doing A Leicester'

When football impacts on language...

Leicester City’s success has had such a powerful impact that it’s inspired the use of a new verb in the English language.  To ‘do a Leicester’…

The English Dictionary, Montgomery-Smythe Publishing Associates 2017 Edition:

Leicester
verb
1. To ‘do a Leicester’.  To enter a competition or contest as an underdog thought to have little or no chance of winning, and yet achieve unexpected or astonishing success.
Example: ‘I hope we can do a Leicester next season.’  Antonym: To ‘do a Chelsea’.
2. To make an impossible dream come true.

. . . . . . . .

Here are a few examples…

Sporting headlines:

“Former Huddersfield Town man out to ‘do a Leicester’.”

“James McCarthy urges Scotland to ‘do a Leicester’.”

Leicester Pre-Season Predictions Proved Wrong

Before the season started, both fans and pundits alike got it spectacularly wrong with their predictions for Leicester City and their opinions of Claudio Ranieri's appointment as manager.

With Leicester now on the verge of writing one of the greatest sporting stories of all time, here are a selection of tweets where the hashtag #BenefitOfHindsight comes to mind...

Claudio Ranieri? Really?

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) July 13, 2015

Big name bad choice in my opinion ! Time will tell ! Hopefully I'm wrong #foxesneverquit

— Robbie Savage (@RobbieSavage8) July 13, 2015