Why Leicester City's Shakespeare rebranding is a pure myth

Football journalists and bloggers are a humble bunch. The thing that keeps them motivated is to help their friends and colleagues. The most pleasurable activity they can find is to assist younger writers to advance their own careers, even at the expense of themselves, and to impart wisdom and knowledge.

There is no jealousy amongst them. They are a picture of self-assuredness. It helps that the job is so well paid, meaning that there is always plenty to go around. Once there might have been stresses and strains, and those might have been exacerbated by the notorious dodgy diet and lifestyle of the old school hack packs.

But no longer is this a sea of cigarettes, harsh whiskey and sausage meat. No, now it’s all about Sunday morning Park Runs, protein powder and kettle bells.

As well as this, football journalism is no longer seen as a method for the intellectually flat-lining heavy drinker to make his way in the world.

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The new writer is in it not just to break news, but to break taboos and conventions in the written word – to achieve something close to high art. Literature is no longer a dirty word, instead the writing must be brave, compelling, artful, personal and deeply beautifully written. There are new standards. As an example, just have a look at some of the brilliant match reports penned from last night’s match of Leicester City against Sevilla.

Despite sacking Claudio Ranieri, it seems that All’s Well That Ends Well, and for Gary Lineker, it was certainly a case of As You Like It, because after Samir Nasri’s Comedy of Errors, Leicester were the better side than Sevilla, Measure For Measure, as Claudio Ranieri takes some time off in Italy, and considers retirement as a Merchant of Venice, and as the players significant others retire to the home counties for some R&R, now the Merry Wives of Windsor, the Champions League victory means that last year’s Premier League victory no longer seems like some kind of Midsummer Night’s Dream, because of the victory that was so straightforward over the excellent Spanish side who were reduced to the Taming Of The Shrew, after the Tempest of the relegation battle, there was no disappointing Twelfth Night, and Kasper Schmeichel was the very opposite of Massimo Taibi, the inverse of Two Gentleman of Verona, Leicester have left A Winter’s Tale behind in order to start spring with fresh hope. 169 words, invoice enclosed.

And while there is truly award-winning, intimidatingly good work like that, it’s not all about crafting sentences of remarkable beauty. There is now superb tactical and statistical analysis to compete with.

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Some people have written that Leicester were improved because of the relief of being freed from a manager who had lost their respect. Other people have suggested that something to do with the game other than tactics had an effect. These people are, of course, fools who do not understand the game as brilliantly and intelligently as I do. With just three simple diagrams I can demonstrate the key to Leicester’s success.

One, look at the radically different approaches between Ranieri and Craig Shakespeare in their tactical descriptions. One (on the right) is far more effective a line-up than the other, as you can tell from the sheer intelligence dripping from the example on the right.

And lastly, there is a new, scientific approach to analysis of football matches. Here’s a sample of one writer. As you can see, with the blogging and journalist community more harmonious than ever, helping one another and with proper funding, we’ve never had it so good.

In the past, heatmaps were something to show the busiest part of the pitch, or the area a player covered most. Now, the scans on the pitch are aimed directly at the brains of the players, making real-time analysis of which lobe is using most energy during a given passage of play. Usually, that’s just before a key past, or a pre-pre-pre-assist, but given the biggest talking point of Leicester vs Sevilla was Samir Nasri’s clash, we can examine the precise thought of the two men at the moment they came together. As you can see, this kind of analysis is really bringing a new kind of understanding to the highest echelons of the modern game.