Skip to main content

Why Leicester City's late owner means more to the city than just football

As Arsenal head to the East Midland's club this weekend, LAYTH YOUSIF remembers Khun Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha

IT WAS a little white stone. A small, unprepossessing little stone that someone had carefully laid outside a busy football ground.

Amid the bustle of fans hurrying and scurrying, the sights and sounds of familiar activities amplified by cries from programme sellers, the scene framed by police horses in the background and distracted by the unmistakable smell of frying burgers and onions wafting in the air, you would have missed this humble little white stone, hidden as it was by busy feet striding by.

If you hadn’t been looking at the ground in that split second when you walked near it, you’d never have seen it. But I did. Intrigued, I took a closer look.

The stone had a message. A sad message that spoke for so many. A shapeless little white stone that someone had taken the trouble to bring to a stadium. On it, an unknown hand had inked in bright marker: “RIP Mr Vichai.”

I took a photo of the stone. It was laid outside Leicester City’s Filbert Way a year after their beloved owner and four other people died in a nearby helicopter accident back in 2018.

This weekend, before Arsenal’s game with Leicester City on Saturday lunchtime, I will once again look for that stone which somehow encapsulates the emotional outpouring from the unexpected tragedy that befell innocents.

A fatal crash that prompted an outpouring of grief, affection and yes, love for the lost souls, after an accident that still reverberates today.

Any bereavement is a calamity, and all souls are equal in death. But for the City of Leicester, and every single Foxes supporter near and far, the heartbreaking loss of their owner Khun Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha affected so many.

Who, on that fateful late October evening three long years ago — as goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel waved goodbye to Khun Vichai as the club’s owner boarded the helicopter waiting in the centre circle of the pitch — could have foreseen such a wretched turn of events?

Kaveporn Punpare, Nusara Suknamai, Izabela Lechowicz and pilot Eric Swaffer also perished after the craft spun moments after take-off, lurching violently to the right just above the stadium.

The experienced Swaffer was later hailed as a posthumous hero after somehow managing to angle the ailing chopper over and away from the stadium to a deserted car park at the south-east corner of the ground.

Upon dreadful impact, Danish keeper Schmeichel instinctively knew there was nothing he, or anyone could do, bar raise the emergency services. With many still insinde Filbert Way, hundreds of lives were saved by the late Swaffer’s final act.

The tragedy stunned the world, not just those insular souls on Planet Football. The outpouring of grief for one of Thailand’s most successful businessmen — and the most-loved owner in the Premier League — was all too real.

At the time, thousands of fans, as well as players and club staff, along with Buddhist monks, laid flowers at the beautiful memorial garden near the East Stand. Only this week suited senior players and boss Brendan Rodgers did so again in honour.

The calm and restorative garden of remembrance contains two animals imagined in plant form — the elephant, which is one of the national symbols of Thailand, and, naturally, given City’s nickname, a fox.

As well as a brass rendering of Khun Vichai’s beloved dog. It is fitting that the garden's soil has been nourished by the remnants of flowers left in honour of the deceased during the 36 months since.

In games that followed the 2018 disaster at Filbert Way, moving tributes appeared on City’s big screens and on the club’s social media channels, the haunting melody Nuvole Bianche by composer Ludovico Einaudi underlined the loss still further. The renowned Italian pianist having also composed film soundtracks including This Is England.

Even now, grief-stricken Leicester supporters still wear scarves that read: “Forever in our hearts”, while singing that “Vichai had a dream.”

The dream, of course, was the fact that 5000/1 outsiders Leicester would win the world’s most competitive, glamorous, richest, and at rare but enthralling moments the best, league on the planet.

They did so, in the most remarkable, wonderful, life-affirming way at the end of the 2015-16 season that left not a single neutral feeling anything other than happy for them. All of them. The club, the fans, and the owner.

Why? Khun Vichai’s legacy reveals all.

For many owners, success is all that matters. Nothing else is important. For Khun Vichai, the Leicester community mattered to him just as much. He, through the club, wanted to help people. And he did.

Yes, he transformed the club and left a fine footballing legacy of a £100 million training ground at Seagrave — allowing a number of burgeoning youngsters to knock on the first team door, after graduating from the club’s thriving academy.

But it was more than that. Khun Vichai also donated more than £4m to community causes in the city of Leicester. For a place that had endured deeper and longer lockdowns than the many across the country, his generosity has been amplified by the challenges brought on by this pandemic.

He donated scarves, he offered food, beers and free away travel to long-suffering fans before and after 2016. He held parties for sick children at Leicester’s Royal Infirmary, even handing over £1m to the hospital — and the same amount again to the university’s medical department, doubling the total to help put towards a new children’s hospital.

He gave to individuals and those in dire need, quietly handing the family of Leicester supporter Ellis Page a whopping £50,000 for research into rare illness.

No wonder the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Leicester Royal Infirmary is named after the late Leicester owner, as well as the city’s Intensive Care Unit for stricken youngsters. All of which have helped a struggling community immensely during the Covid era.

And that’s without even mentioning his ongoing legacy on the field of play.

The way such a progressive club is run by the highly rated Rodgers and his staff, including the recruitment of players and the policy of buying and selling at the optimum price and time, is testament to the well-run husbandry implemented by Khun Vichai that started nearly a decade ago.

The proof is in the ageless Jamie Vardy, as well as past and present players from Riyad Mahrez, N’Golo Kante, Ben Chilwell and Harry Maguire — to Jonny Evans, James Justin, Ricardo Pereira, Caglar Soyuncu, Wilfred Ndidi, James Maddison, as well as recent four goal hero Patson Daka (echoing Derek Hines’s achievement in 1958, even if Daka will never retire to run a post office nearby) Boubakary Soumare, Harvey Barnes and the injured Wesley Fofana.

With Belgium’s talented Youri Tielemans scoring the cracking goal that won Leicester the FA Cup for the first time it its 137-year history last May, the club is one that is admired from afar by many, not least for the way Rodgers has steered them to two successive fifth place finishes on a fraction of the budget of the big boys.

Wherever you look, Khun Vihai’s memory remains stronger than ever in all aspects of the club.

No wonder there have been tributes aplenty once again this week, treasured mementoes to honour the loss of a good man three years on.

From scarves and plants to shirts and flowers. And a humble little stone that says so much.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today