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Leicester City had just been crowned Premier League champions when two Foxes players bizarrely found themselves together in a police custody suite.
Marc Albrighton was the second to be ushered in and surprised to see title-winning team-mate Ben Chilwell smiling back at him.
These were two players on lockdown for their own good, as efforts to get to team-mate Jamie Vardy’s place for the impromptu – and now famous – house party became too much of a risk as Foxes fans in their thousands crowded around the striker’s property.
“It seems a bit surreal,” Albrighton told BBC East Midlands Today as he recalled the hours that immediately followed confirmation of Leicester’s title win on 2 May 2016.
“I got my parents to try drop me at Jamie Vardy’s house and they had to drop me at the police station instead because there were too many fans outside his gate so I had to get a police escort in.
“I remember getting to the station and Ben Chilwell was sat in the custody room, because he obviously had been told to do the same thing.
“Then we were both sat in the back of this police car driving through to Vards’ house and you see all the fans banging on the the police car window and throwing scarves on the car.
“When stuff like that was happening, it’s how I imagine celebrities feel.”
Relegation doesn’t ‘taint’ memory of title win – Morgan
The jubilant and chaotic scenes in Leicester that night – sparked when the Foxes’ nearest rivals Tottenham failed to beat Chelsea in a title-deciding result – was an outpouring of delighted disbelief as the Foxes pulled off what remains one of the most famous underdog stories.
The reason it is known as the 5,000-1 title win is that the likelihood of the team that narrowly escaped relegation a year earlier – having only earned promotion back to the top flight after a decade-long absence just 12 months before that – was so far fetched that bookmakers wrote it off as just about impossible.
“Ten years on and I don’t think a day has gone by where it’s not been mentioned,” Albrighton said.
“That shows the size of the achievement.”
And yet, there is a sense of unease about the milestone anniversary because the club’s struggles of recent years has culminated in back-to-back relegations. It means Leicester will play in the third tier of English football for just the second time in their history next season.
Wes Morgan, who was captain of the Premier League title-winning side, has previously said he is “sad and hurt” to see where Leicester are now, but also insists the club’s greatest achievement “definitely needs to be celebrated, talked about and enjoyed”.
“I don’t think it will taint what we did by any means,” Morgan said of the club’s relegation from the Championship.
“Regardless of what’s happened, the club, the fans and everyone will celebrate that time.”
Morgan was part of a core group of Foxes players – which included former non-league forward Vardy, goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, Danny Drinkwater and Riyad Mahrez – who won both the Championship title with Leicester in 2014 and Premier League two years later.
Andy King was also there for both, as well as the League One title win of 2009 which came a year before the club was transformed by the takeover of the King Power Group, headed by the late Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
Albrighton, along with Leonardo Ulloa and Danny Simpson, were among the players brought in when the Foxes returned to the Premier League.
While it was a side that battled to avoid relegation, then boss Nigel Pearson had pieced together the basis of team that would go on to shock the footballing world soon after.
N’Golo Kante – a future World Cup winner with France, who was picked up for about £6m from Caen – was one of a number of crucial additions made in the summer of 2015.
Christian Fuchs also arrived on a free transfer that year, while former Germany defender Robert Huth was landed on a permanent deal from Stoke after he played a part in Leicester’s ‘Great Escape’ while on loan.
At the same time, Italian manager Claudio Ranieri – who had previously been given the moniker of ‘The Tinkerman’ by the English media for the frequency in which he changed his teams when in charge of Chelsea more than a decade earlier – came in as the unfancied boss that would go on to oversee the previously unimaginable title win.
Ranieri endeared himself to many with the humour and joy he brought to the job – with the Italian at one stage saying he would reward clean sheets with pizzas and coined the now iconic ‘dilly ding, dilly dong’ catchphrase when explaining how he tried to keep players focused.
When Morgan reflects on what was achieved in Ranieri’s solitary full season in the job, the former defender still regards the title win as being “beyond my wildest dreams”.
“There’s been lots of debates about what is the biggest achievement in sports,” Morgan said.
“If you put into context the position that Leicester was in – having not been in the top flight for so long and just avoiding relegation the season before – and the group we had included a lot of players that had not really featured in the Premier League or were unknown, and if you put all that together I think we’ve got to be right there in the top of the conversations of being the best sporting achievement there was or there is.”
