By Nick Powell
From the end of January to the beginning of March, in anticipation of my 20th birthday and acceptance that professional sport is well and truly beyond me, I’m looking back through my 20 years to find the sporting memories that have had the biggest impact on me.
For this article I head back to 2016, the year in which Leicester City produced the most extraordinary sporting upset ever, with the 5000/1 shots winning the Premier League title, before removing their charming and talented manager, Claudio Ranieri.
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2016 - Dilly Ding, Dilly Gone
As this series will go on to show, I love sport and it has had a profound effect on my life. If I could, I'd spend every minute of every day talking about it, because heaven knows that's how much I think about it.
But until March 2016, I'd never actually put any of my opinions to the test.
A Friday night at the pub gave me the inspiration, during a chat with Harry Vegting, a friend of mine who I've relied on to host me and others for big PPV boxing fights for over 3 years (that's not the only reason why we're friends).
Finally I set up Powell's Perspective, a blog where I would air my various pearls of stupidity on what was going on in the sporting world.
The First Article Published on this Website
When you look back, it seems strange that it took so long for anyone to give Leicester a chance, they were consistently ahead at the top of the table and from Round 25, never fewer than five points clear.
But people just couldn't believe it, the idea that a team that hadn't spent hundreds of millions of pounds could actually win the League.
Not only that, but they were playing a style of football never before seen in the upper echelons of the Premier League. Many teams have won the League having to sit back for the odd game here and there, but they had just 42.4% possession of the course of the season.
Riyad Mahrez, now at City, was an integral part of Leicester's victory
When you think that no team has ever been close to having less than 50%, and that current champions Man City had 71.2% last season it makes it all the more staggering.
Even League leaders Liverpool, a team not afraid of giving the ball away to help their incisive attacking style have over 60%. And that for me was one of the most extraordinary things about their run.
They entered over half their games as likely underdogs, and only lost three. That's just crazy.
And then there's the sheer task it is to win the Premier League. Sure, the Foxes had great luck with injuries, few distractions and the dismal nature of the big six clubs contributed but they showed with limited resources it is truly staggering what a focused and determined group of players can achieve.
Ranieri seemed like he couldn't quite believe what he and his players had done
It was a special story, and for the six months after that extraordinary win, Leicester's fans, players and manager were held in such high regard.
Given how amazing it was it is seems surprising we aren't still talking about it now, but then again the explanation is unfortunately clear.
Had Ranieri still been at Leicester, and they continued to challenge the top six domination, we would probably all still be talking about them, but the fairy tale ended in the most unsavoury of ways.
His sacking, seemingly brought about by his players no longer wanting to play for him was devastating to watch as a sports fan. For me, it left a permanent scar on the story, and while some reading will disagree with that, we can all agree that if Ranieri was still at Leicester, it would feature in our thinking far more than it does now.
The end of Claudio Ranieri left a bitter taste
It was an unlikely football story with a likely ending. Loyalty, commitment and gratitude exchanged for a desperation for short-term success.
Gary Lineker couldn't put it better:
"I think the way that everyone got behind Leicester was something I'd never witnessed in football before and to just toss that away over a premature decision is quite gobsmacking."One BBC Correspondent described "a sense of grief" in Leicester.
Why I mentioned this website at the start is that fact that, as I was building my amateur portfolio within Powell's Perspective and on Pundit Arena, I wrote two articles with radically contrasting tones on the story. The first written days after Leicester were crowned Champions, the second written the night Craig Shakespeare took charge of his first game as interim boss.
They couldn't have been more different, the whole episode was frustrating and sad.
Unlike the happy sentiment of my first two articles in this series, this was a cold hard lesson that the World is a brutal place and that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
As a result, when I look back today, it just doesn't sit in my mind as having the same magic as other great upsets like Japan beating South Africa in rugby or "The Miracle on Ice" or Forest winning the European Cup.
I still look back on the sporting year of 2016 fondly. It was the year of the sensational re-birth of England Rugby, the Britain's best Olympics for well over 100 years and Andy Murray winning his second Wimbledon title.
The first England Grand Slam I'd ever seen, in the 13th Six Nations I'd ever watched, was a personal highlight of 2016.
Alas, it had a hugely dissatisfying ending.
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