I am not the biggest football fan by any stretch of the imagination, I do follow Man Utd and take an interest in the premier league however I urge any non-football fans to read on as this column is far from just being about football.
About a year ago the premiership kicked off for the 2015-2016 season and for once there was not one individual team that looked that it would be a clear winner although there was one team who were being branded a clear loser before they had even had their first training session, that team was called Leicester City. The year before they had a team’s worst nightmare and finished a whisker away from being relegated, in 2015 they started off the premier league as a 5,000 to 1 shot at the bookies to win the premiership race, to put that into perspective the bookies thought that there was more chance of Kim Kardashian becoming the next US President than Leicester winning the league!
So other than having nothing to lose what else drove the Leicester City “foxes” to victory?
Well one of the people behind this amazing story is the Leicester striker, this was a guy who had played “nonleague” football for over 7 years and although probably only earning about £200 a week and being in his midtwenties (an age when most would say if you hadn’t made it by now you never will) the guy played his heart out and gave 100% every single game, of course I am impressed by natural talent although what impresses me much more is plain and simple hard work because for every person out there with natural talent there is someone else who will beat them by working harder! This is what Jamie Vardy did and now the world literally is at his feet.
The other key factor in Leicester’s success in my opinion is their manager, Claudio Ranieri is he a great manager? The answer I don’t know although I have heard that the owners of the club set him a target at the beginning of the season which was every place he finished up the premier league table he would receive £100,000, there are 20 places in the premier league so if that was the case the manager went and bagged himself a £2million bonus!
So this year the football world has been left stunned and Leicester City proved that all you need to succeed is two things, hard work and incentives to reach your targets, two things that I have always sworn by in business and next month I am going to share my top 5 tips to setting and achieving your targets in life although the hard work bit is up to you!
Leicester City will go on to lift the premier league cup very shortly although for me this year there were two clear winners, the first was football, at last a team have come along to prove that you don’t need billionaire owners from overseas to spend millions on players to compete with the big boys and of course us, that’s right, you and me, the regular guys who are doing their best trying to be someone and make their dreams come true, so whilst you have Leicester City in mind, use them as some inspiration and go out there right now and commit to whatever your dream is, even if it does sound like a 5,000 to 1 shot and next month I will be talking about how you can achieve it!
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Twitter @Theadamcorbally