Fearless - by Jonathan Northcroft (Paperback)

About the Book

"First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Headline Publishing Group"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

"The odds of the Foxes winning the Premier League at the start of the season were the same as the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster being proven to exist, Christmas being the warmest day of the year in England or Barack Obama playing cricket for England after he left the Oval Office." -- ESPN

On March 21, 2015, Leicester City lost their sixth game in eight matches. Without a victory for two months, they were rock bottom of the English Premier League, heading for certain relegation to the lower division, and about to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime financial bonanza of TV money and opportunity. As usual, London and Manchester would clean up, the rich would get richer, and the hopes of the small, overlooked, multicultural city would sink.

But Leicester started to win. They stayed up; and in the new season they kept on winning. Favorites for relegation, rank outsiders as potential champions (their 5000 -- 1 odds were the longest in the world for any major sporting event), their entire squad had been assembled for less than the cost of a single player for Manchester City. Still, they beat Manchester City and Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea: the most incredible cast of written-offs, grafters, misfits, and journeymen came together for the season of their lives.

This is the story every underdog dreams of, every small town with a much larger, more affluent neighbor hopes for, and a triumph that defies logic and expectation.

Review Quotes

Many books examined Leicester City s glorious, unexpected victory in this year s Premiership, but only Northcroft s account really understood its significance. The Telegraph, Top 50 Books of 2016
Northcroft s stylish narrative delves deeper than the stock themes of heart, spirit and long-ball football, and argues that it was, above all, a triumph of the collective over the individual; the slow build over the quick fix. Jonathan Liew, The Telegraph
Required reading for every club aspiring to achieve a fraction of what Leicester did, it reveals in its impeccably researched detail some of the less appreciated reasons why the greatest miracle in sports history actually happened. Ian Herbert, The Independent
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About the Author

Jonathan Northcroft is the soccer correspondent for the Sunday Times. He is a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 5 Live's football programs, and a regular guest on Sky Sports' Sunday Supplement show. Inaugural winner of the Jim Rodger Memorial Award for young sports writers in Scotland, he was shortlisted for Feature Writer of the Year at the Sports Journalists Association awards in 2006 and Football Writer of the Year in 2016.