We did the math, and Leicester City are the greatest underdogs ever
The English soccer team might pull off the biggest upset in history
By Asher Kohn
There’s a big surprise brewing in sports right now. In fact, “big” doesn’t really capture it. By one metric, we’re about to witness the biggest upset in the history of professional sports.
The team involved is called Leicester City. You’re forgiven for not having heard of them. They play soccer in England’s Premier League, but Leicester is not exactly an established power. The club’s most recent claim to fame was having dropped its manager after a sex tape scandal.
At the start of the season, just a year after being promoted to England’s top division, the club was given 5,000-to-1 odds of winning the Premier League. With just 12 matches left in the season — and going into a match hosting lowly Norwich City — Leicester City is two points up on the rest of the league. If they finish the season on top, they can plausibly lay claim to having achieved the least likely victory in sports.
The English gambling house William Hill has been around since 1934, and they don’t have another triumph that comes close. The greatest underdogs to win the Premier League were Manchester United, who had 13-2 odds in the 2006-7 season. But it’s hard to call a team with Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, a team that finished second the year before, true underdogs. The fact they had long-ish odds shows how top-heavy the Premier League is — and what Leicester City is up against.
William Hill said the longest odds they ever paid out on were 2,500-1. That was in 1998, when a proud grandfather named Peter Edwards bet £50 that his 18-month-old grandson would play soccer internationally. Fifteen years later, that grandson stepped on the field for Wales as the youngest man to play an international match for the country. Harry Wilson (or to be exact, his manager Chris Coleman) won Mr. Edwards £125,000.
To reiterate: The bookies felt that a random infant becoming an international soccer professional was more than twice as likely as lowly Leicester City winning the Premier League.
Or how about the “Miracle on Ice”? In 1980, a group of American college kids beat the seemingly-unconquerable Soviet Union in ice hockey at the Winter Olympics. Again, it was called a miracle. Bookmakers gave the Yanks 1,000-1 odds — way better than Leicester City.
Another example Americans may remember is Rulon Gardner, the Greco-Roman wrestler who faced off against Russian Aleksandr Karelin in the 2000 Olympics. Karelin had won gold at every world championship and Olympics event since 1988. The “Russian King Kong” was a Hero of the Russian Federation and hadn’t lost a match since 1987. Rulon Gardner was a dairy farmer. He overcame 2,000-1 odds to defeat Karelin and win the gold — the highest ever for a single event, but not even close to Leicester City’s odds.
Even now, with over two-thirds of the season gone, the bookmakers judge two teams — Arsenal and Tottenham — as more likely to win the league than Leicester. But this is Leicester City we’re talking about. Don’t bet against them.
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