Claudio Ranieri always said it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t have been real. Leicester City does not win Premier League championships. Players dismissed as a write-offs or seen as castoffs do not win Premier League championships, nor do managers in the autumn of their careers, after a lifetime of second best.
It always felt like fantasy, and Ranieri always knew it. He said it through last spring, even as the world fell for Leicester’s impossible story, and he said it all through this bleak winter, too, even though he knew it had happened — he had the winner’s medal and the memories to remind him.