“Rotten to the core”: The bitter downfall of a sensational champion

Leicester City

Ten years after their sensational title win, Leicester City have been relegated to the third tier.

Gary Lineker clung desperately to the good old days. Yet even Eden Hazard’s famous goal—the one that crowned Leicester City champions in 2016 and which club legend Lineker shared on his Instagram Story on Wednesday morning—could not ease the pain: ten years after that historic upset, the Foxes’ relegation to the third tier is a stark reality.

Worse still, tabloid The Sun declared: “The club is rotten to the core.” After the 2-2 draw on the third-to-last Championship matchday against Hull City, supporters chanted, “Sack the board.” Thai billionaire Aiyawatt “Top” Srivaddhanaprabha—son of the title-winning owner who died in a 2018 helicopter crash—is at the centre of the meltdown.

True, his tenure saw the club lift the 2021 FA Cup and English Super Cup, and he personally injected hundreds of millions. Yet his duty-free empire frayed during the pandemic, the era of lavish spending is over, and recent transfers have been bankrolled by loans.

Last summer the club lost Jamie Vardy, their last title-winning icon, to Italy; with him went its soul. Shrewd scout Steve Walsh, discoverer of Vardy, N’Golo Kanté and Riyad Mahrez, left long ago.

Instead of investing in promising, hungry talents, the club paid established stars the highest wages in the division—and gambled away its fortune. Last year’s £71.1m loss took the three-year total to £180m, prompting a six-point deduction in February.

It appears that 40 million euros has already been pledged

Robert Huth, the former Germany defender and Championship-winning “Berlin Wall”, leapt to Srivaddhanaprabha’s defence. “It’s very easy to criticise him,” he told the BBC, but “Top” had “taken on responsibility at a very young age” after his father’s death. Huth added that both the chairman and sporting director Jon Rudkin, who is also under fire, “love Leicester and want only the best, but they need help.”

Once the club’s immediate drop from the Premier League to League One was confirmed, “Top” faced the angry supporters. He vowed to carry on, sharing “the pain” of the fans and insisting, “There are no excuses.” Now, he said, it was a matter of making “the necessary decisions”.

The club is set to appoint its eighth manager since Brendan Rodgers’ departure three years ago, yet the outlook remains bleak. Leicester will receive an additional £40 million in parachute payments following their 2025 Premier League relegation, though most of that sum is reportedly already committed.

The slim hope of a points deduction for rivals West Bromwich Albion looks remote. For now, fans cling to memories of Hazard, Vardy and the royal-blue fairytale of 2016.