Puel says any Leicester player can opt out of Cardiff match

Claude Puel has said any Leicester City player who does not feel ready to return to action a week after the fatal helicopter crash that has caused deep grief around the club will be free to opt out of playing against Cardiff City on Saturday.

The squad have all indicated their willingness to play after Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, the club’s vice-chairman and son of the chairman Vichai, who died in the crash, said he would like the match to go ahead, but the manager is leaving open the possibility that individuals may have second thoughts as kick-off approaches.

“I don’t want to dictate anything,” Puel said. “To train or not, to play or not. I want to wait and understand the different feelings my players may have. For me it is open. [From] what I saw this week, I think all the players would like to play this game. I give always the option. The first thing is to listen to my players and different feelings. I said after this incident we have to understand people and the man, not the player. The player is the second thing. The most important thing is the man.”

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Puel said the trauma at Leicester was like nothing he has encountered in his career because of the bond that existed between Vichai and staff. “Sometimes a squad can have someone die – a player may have lost a member of his family and in this moment it is important to support. Here is another thing. All people in the club lost a member of their family.

“I don’t want to manipulate emotions just to play football,” he added. “I just want [that] we have the capacity to give our best and to honour the chairman and to remember what he can bring for all people in the club and for the fans – just this.”

Jamie Vardy, who invited Vichai to his wedding in May 2016, said this had been “the hardest week of everyone’s lives” but spoke of the players’ determination to play on Saturday. “He was not just a chairman, he literally was part of your extended family. That’s just the sort of person he was.

“We all spoke about it, about obviously wanting to play – it’s what Vichai would have wanted. That’s what we are going to do. We know what we have to do, we have to go out there and all honour his name and put in a performance which will hopefully get us the win. I know people are saying the result doesn’t matter but for us as lads we want to try and make it a positive result. It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be very emotional but we’ve all sat down and had a chat and the one thing we wanted to do was play this game and honour the man himself.”

Aiyawatt will be in Bangkok for his father’s funeral, which begins on Saturday and lasts for seven days. Puel will lead many of his squad, including Vardy, Kasper Schmeichel and the captain, Wes Morgan, to Thailand after the Cardiff game. “We’re a close-knit group, one big family. One of the main reasons for that is Vichai so for us to be there is massively important,” said Vardy.