A secret invite and other ‘pinch-me’ moments before Leicester woke up

It was a dream then, it is a dream now – especially as Leicester prepare for League One.

Ten years ago the Foxes were preparing to defend their Premier League title and looking forward to Champions League football.

At 5,000-1, they had pulled off the most improbable, the most stunning, the most incredible feat to shock the world.

But now, after back-to-back relegations, those days seem almost as surreal as when they actually happened.

New manager Russell Martin will be expected to take the club back to the Championship at the first attempt, something that sounds nowhere near as impossible as what the Foxes previously managed.

A decade on, the ‘pinch-me’ moments live on for those who were there, and some have shared them with BBC Sport.

Spoiler: they might not be the ones you knew about.

Leicester had won the title without kicking a ball on 2 May 2016 when nearest challengers Tottenham Hotspur could only manage a 2-2 draw with Chelsea.

The next day, there was only one group of men the media wanted to speak to.

The trouble was they were hard to find.

Crowds gathered at the club’s former training ground at Belvoir Drive, a few miles outside the centre of Leicester.

Journalists and fans waited – one cameraman persuaded a neighbour to allow him in to film from their bathroom window as he aimed to get footage of the celebrating Foxes.

The media were finally instructed to head to King Power Stadium where the press room would be opened.

A five-minute drive took 30 minutes through revelling fans and it was a battle to get to there but, inside, the world’s media edged in, hoping to hear from those who made this miracle possible.

But only eight reporters would receive a secret invitation to head back to Belvoir Drive.

Quietly, one-by-one, the handpicked members of the British press who regularly covered the club, slipped out of the packed room and made their way back.

This time, they were let in and ushered into the family room, just to the right of reception.

When manager Claudio Ranieri walked in, he received an immediate, impromptu, standing ovation and shook hands with those who had watched the astounding season unfold.

The man the world wanted to speak to gave an engaging audience to a few writers for 45 minutes.

Ranieri had been a left-field appointment at the start of that season, having not managed in England for 12 years since leaving Chelsea in 2004.

And he had considered bringing in some unconventional methods, such as double training sessions, which were nipped in the bud with the help of Craig Shakespeare, who had stayed on as assistant after the sacking of Ranieri’s predecessor Nigel Pearson.

There were off-field changes he would bring in, though, including taking the squad out to make their own pizza after the first clean sheet of the season against Crystal Palace in October 2015.

“It sounds funny – we’re keeping a clean sheet and gone for pizza but you then end up speaking to someone in the squad you probably wouldn’t have spoken to at training because there’s 25 of you,” says former centre-back Robert Huth.

“You train, but you don’t really know the guy. How’s he functioning? Does he like me to shout at him? Does he want me to just be quiet?

“You talk and go through the game where maybe you wouldn’t mention things, like a problem that you see on a pitch, if it’s like, a stiff environment.

“If you’re out and about, and you go: ‘When the ball’s here, I prefer if you do this’ – just like tiny little things and you take criticism on differently when you talk in a social environment. You don’t want to sit in a meeting room being told what to do.”

It allowed winger Riyad Mahrez to flourish and Jamie Vardy to plunder 24 league goals, with Ranieri comparing his counter-attacking forwards to the RAF.

It is well documented that Vardy had invited the squad to his house to watch what would end up being the title-winning match as Spurs blew a 2-0 lead to draw with Chelsea – and that some players needed to wait at the local police station before arriving because of the crowds of fans who had gathered outside.

But not all his team-mates were there.

While everyone else partied, winger Nathan Dyer had a different night, in hospital with wife Laura after the birth of their second child, Shea, two days earlier.

“I had the laptop out watching the game in hospital, the boys were at the party. I wasn’t able to make it but I’d never miss the birth of my child,” he says.

“It was a strange feeling. It was surreal, like it wasn’t real at the time but it was.

“We had to be put in a room as people were putting their heads round and even then you could see the eyes at the door. People were congratulating me and were really proud.

“It was the whole city, even people who were not fans were so happy Leicester had achieved this.”

He’d had a dramatic arrival at the club in the first place that season, joining on loan from Swansea on transfer deadline day and being flown to Leicester in the late former owner Khun Vichai’s helicopter to beat the deadline.

“My wife was pregnant, we’d just moved into a new house, so everything was in boxes, it was a wild day,” he says.

“It was exciting for me but also nerve-wracking because it was so intense, to send the helicopter to get me to get it over the line. It was a proud moment for me – I’d always wanted to be involved in a moment like that, watching on the TV – breaking news!”

Leicester were two points behind Arsenal at the turn of the year but one defeat in the final 16 games – a dramatic late loss at Arsenal in February – had put them on course for the title.

The closer they edged to the impossible, the more the interest in the Foxes exploded.

Vardy had a lookalike – postman Lee Chapman – and Ranieri had a sausage named after him.

Local butchers W Archer & Son created the Ranieri from Packington free-range pork, fennel, garlic and chilli.

It won a star at the Great Taste awards and at one stage the shop was shifting 12kg (26.5lb) a day.

Owner Sean Jeynes even brought a plate of sausages to the stadium before a news conference, which led Ranieri to declare himself ‘the sausageman’.

“It was surreal that day. How did that ever happen?” says Jeynes.

“We were making sausages two or three times a day, smelling of garlic, smelling of fennel, but it was just a crazy time. It really was a crazy time – you can’t quite comprehend what it was like.

“It had a massive effect on the city, it had a great effect on everybody. Everyone was much happier.

“Nothing can replace the Italian sausage, the recipe, and the pork, fennel, garlic chili and a hint of Champions League.

“People would say, why don’t you do a [Brendan] Rodgers sausage [after winning the FA Cup in 2021], but it’s just not the same.”

The sausage is still occasionally back on their counters, a lasting reminder of a unique time.

That is not the only taste of success that is still being enjoyed today.

“Thanks to Leicester City it meant I could retire at 55 instead of 67,” says Foxes Trust co-chair Lynn Wyeth, who stuck £2 on the club at odds of 5,000-1 at the start of the season.

“It was actually really stressful. A first world problem, isn’t it? It was stressful enough, watching them get closer and closer thinking, oh my god, can we do it? But knowing that there was £10,000 riding on it as well, was like, ‘oh, no, I almost wish I’d cashed out earlier’.

“When I won, I had my account shut for money laundering, I had to prove it was me and that I’d won it.

“We managed to clear it up quite quickly, I think it’s just an automatic thing.

“There you go. Thank you, Leicester.”