When Leicester City won the Premier League title in 2015/16, the Foxes completed one of sport’s greatest and most unexpected fairy tales at odds of around 5,000/1.
While this is considered by many to be the single biggest sporting upset of all-time, Leicester are by no means the first team to beat the odds and lift a league title ahead of more illustrious rivals.
But which of these achievements stands out from the crowd? Here’s our pick of the three most unlikely league champions of all-time.
#1. Leicester City, 2015/16
We’ll start with Leicester City’s aforementioned 2015/16 league triumph, which immediately followed a season in which the side narrowly escaped relegation.
During that year, Nigel Pearson’s switch to an attack-oriented 3-4-3 formation helped the Foxes win seven of their final nine league matches to rise from the bottom of the table to 14th.
This wasn’t enough for the combative Pearson to keep his job, with Claudio Ranieri replacing him in time for the new season. While many predicted another scrap with relegation, Leicester lost just two of their first 17 league matches through December 26th, while a stunning 3-1 away win over Manchester City in February left them five points clear at the top.
The Foxes, who were inspired by the prolific Jamie Vardy, winger Riyad Mahrez and the indefatigable N’Golo Kante, subsequently held on to secure their inaugural top-flight title, stunning the world and many of their more illustrious rivals in the process.
#2. Nottingham Forest, 1977/78
While Leicester lifted themselves off the bottom of the league to win the league title the following season, Brian Clough’s unassuming Nottingham Forest side went one better in 1977/78.
After earning promotion to the First Division the previous season, Forest were tipped to go straight back down by pundits. After all, they’d only scraped promotion by the skin of their teeth in 1977, while the signing of Peter Shilton and Kenny Burns for £150,000 did little to change the perception of Forest’s squad as being laboured and lacking in inspiration.
However, Burns and Shilton starred in the meanest defence in the league, while Forest lost just three games all season to finish seven points ahead of previous, back-to-back champions Liverpool.
What’s more, Forest went on to win consecutive European Cup in 1979 and 1980, completing an astonishing ascent that hasn’t been replicated since.
#3. Hellas Verona, 1984/85
Currently, Union Berlin are the latest side threatening to upset the status quo in a major European League, and you can currently leverage Linebet bonus offers to back the unfancied Bundesliga side at 25/1 to lift the title.
However, even this achievement wouldn’t come close to Hellas Verona’s stunning Serie A title win in 1984/85, which came at a time when the Italian top-flight was the single most competitive and most challenging league in the world.
Widely considered to be the biggest shock in the history of Italian football, Verona overcame Torino, Internazionale and Milan to lift the Serie A title, losing just two of their 30 league matches and boasting the best defence of all 16 participating sides.
The title bid was masterminded by shrewd coach Osvaldo Bagnoli, while summer signings Preben Elkjær (the Danish striker) and Galderisi (another forward) provided some much-needed firepower and finished as joint-top scorers with 11 goals each.
Interestingly, the win also came just five years after Lazio and AC Milan were relegated to Serie B following a match-fixing scandal, with Verona’s triumph helping to restore romance and allure to the division as a whole.
