While Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez have stolen the plaudits for Leicester City‘s incredible Premier League campaign this season, it appears that someone else deserves credit for their success.
A Thai Buddhist monk named Phra Prommangkalachan, has been present throughout the Foxes’ miraculous rise from the Championship to the top of the Premier League in the last three seasons.
Prommangkalachan has been a regular visitor to the King Power stadium over the last few years and he credits his blessing of the pitch and giving the players lucky charms for their excellent results this season.
He told AFP: “I hang some amulets on their necks and I gave them these fabric talismans. I’m not sure if they understood what I explained to them about it, but they knew that it would bring them luck.”
Leicester have been owned by the King Power International Group since 2010, when they took over from former chairman Milan Mandaric.
The owners have played a major role in Leicester’s success through their financial backing, and the chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a devout Buddhist, is the man who first made the decision to bring the monks to the Midlands regularly, Phra revealed.
He said: “He brought monks there to pray for auspiciousness and luck in the game, for the management team and the players. The team will be the number one in the Premier League this year for sure.”
Superstitions are extremely common in football, but even so Leicester’s story is a pretty remarkable one and adds another layer of intrigue to their amazing campaign.
Whether the monk’s charms have actually had an effect is difficult to know, but Claudio Ranieri’s men certainly have performed like Premier League champions for most of the season, top-scoring with 53 goals and letting in just 31 at the other end.
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