The fairy tale has turned grim. Leicester City, the English football club that defied 5,000-to-1 odds to lift the Premier League (EPL) trophy, has tumbled all the way down to the third tier.
Leicester drew 2-2 with Hull City in their 2025-2026 English Championship (second tier) Round 44 home match at King Power Stadium in Leicester on Saturday (Korea time).
The draw left Leicester on 42 points, placing them 23rd among 24 teams and confirming their relegation to League One (third tier) next season. With two matches still to play, the club trails 21st-place Blackburn by seven points (49 points) and can no longer overturn the standings even with victories in its remaining fixtures. Teams finishing 22nd through 24th in the Championship are relegated.
Leicester was the team that wrote an unexpected "title fairy tale" in the EPL. A decade ago in the 2015-2016 season, the club overturned the 5,000-to-1 odds set by bookmakers to win its first EPL title, 132 years after its founding. The team then reached the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals in the 2016-2017 season and, in the 2020-2021 season, defeated Chelsea to capture its first Football Association (FA) Cup, riding a steep upward trajectory.
But excessive player acquisitions and lavish wage spending sent the club into a tailspin. In the 2022-2023 season, Leicester finished 18th among 20 EPL clubs and were relegated. The club won the Championship in the 2023-2024 season and earned immediate promotion, only to finish 18th again and drop back to the Championship after a single season. This season, Leicester was docked six points for breaching financial regulations, compounding the humiliation of back-to-back relegations.
