Last night, my son and I watched Oxford City play Leicester City in the first round of the FA Cup. We are season ticket holders at Oxford City, our local non-league club, so it was a special occasion to see them take on a former Premier League champion.
Seeing Leicester brought back memories of one of the most extraordinary sporting achievements of recent times.
In 2015–16, bookmakers priced Leicester at 5,000–1 to win the Premier League. They had narrowly avoided relegation the previous season. Their rivals had bigger budgets, deeper squads and, on paper, better individual players.
Yet they won the league by ten points.
How?
It’s tempting to describe it as a fairy tale or a perfect storm. There was certainly an element of luck, and several established contenders underperformed. But I think there are more interesting lessons behind their achievement.
They understood their competitive advantage.
Under Claudio Ranieri, Leicester didn’t try to imitate the wealthier clubs. They didn’t need to dominate possession or control every aspect of a match. They understood their strengths and developed an approach that maximised them: defensive organisation, intensity, quick transitions and exploiting space.
They built a team around complementarity.
Kanté’s extraordinary ability to recover the ball, Mahrez’s creativity and Vardy’s pace and movement were individually valuable. But their real strength was how these qualities interacted. Each made the others more effective. The collective was greater than the sum of its parts.
They created clarity, trust and consistency.
Players understood their roles and what was expected of them. The team had a relatively settled core, strong relationships and a clear identity. They didn’t need to reinvent themselves every week. They needed to execute their approach, support one another and keep delivering.
They made the most of the opportunity.
The season unfolded in their favour in several respects. Their main rivals struggled for consistency, and Leicester had fewer European commitments to contend with. But favourable circumstances only become opportunities when you are prepared to take advantage of them.
There is something particularly interesting here for those of us working in high-performance sport.
We often start by looking at what we lack: budget, facilities, talent, expertise or resources. We study the most successful programmes and try to replicate what they do.
But perhaps we should also ask a different set of questions.
How well do our people complement one another? Are we clear about our identity and what gives us a competitive advantage? Have we created an environment where people understand their roles, trust one another and can perform at their best? Are we making the most of the resources and talent we already have?
Of course, having better resources and more talented individuals matters. Leicester’s story isn’t an argument against investing in excellence. It’s a reminder that resources alone don’t guarantee performance.
Leicester didn’t have the best squad on paper. They created a team that, for one extraordinary season, performed better than anyone else.
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