For Leicester City, What Happens After Happily Ever After?

The Foxes stunned the soccer world last season, but if they’re not careful, they could follow Blackburn’s cautionary tale.

Quick: Name all six clubs in the history of the English Premier League to win a title. So there’s Manchester United and Manchester City. And Chelsea. And Leicester City last year!! So that’s four. Oh, and Arsenal. And Liverpool must be the last one, right? That’s six.

Close, but not quite. Liverpool has 18 English titles but none since the Premier League’s inception in 1992. The answer you’re looking for is Blackburn.

Who? Blackburn, as in Blackburn Rovers, as in the answer to a trivia question you can stump your friends with. Much like Leicester City could become a decade from now if they aren’t careful.

You probably know the Leicester City story by now, but it’s worth retelling.

They were listed as 5000–1 odds to win the Premier League championship last season, which may have actually been generous for a team that started the previous season with four wins in its first 23 matches.

Instead, Leicester surprised with an early shock win over Manchester United, and continued to hang around the top of the table as the season matured and the rest of the league fell apart around them. Manchester City were decimated by injuries after a huge early start and never recovered. Chelsea were torn apart under since-departed manager Jose Mourinho. Manchester United were never good enough. Tottenham Hotspur couldn’t close the deal. Arsenal were Arsenal.

Meanwhile, legendary Italian manager Claudio Ranieri pulled all of the right strings for Leicester. Jamaica’s Captain (Wes) Morgan held down the fort defensively while newcomers Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante added just the right sparks in midfield. And everything came to a peak behind English hooligan-turned-superstar goalscorer Jamie Vardy.

Leicester kept winning matches while the rest of us kept waiting for the clock to strike midnight on their incredible Cinderella story. It never did.

They won the league by 10 points, celebrating at Chelsea’s famed Stamford Bridge on the final day of the season. Leicester City were champions of England for the first time ever, and are headed to this year’s Champions League as such.

Cinderella had won.

But what happens when Cinderella actually wins? What’s the next adventure?

The year is 1995. This is Blackburn Rovers’ third year back at the top level of English football after a miracle playoff run as a six-seed in the 1992 playoffs ended 26 embarrassing years outside the country’s top flight.

Blackburn are led by longtime Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish as manager, and a surprisingly potent attack dubbed “SAS” — Shearer and Sutton. Alan Shearer is a brash English forward who would go on to be the top scorer and player of the year with 34 goals that year, while new signing Chris Sutton energized the Blackburn attack with an early hat trick and a slew of goals and assists of his own. Colin Hendry stabilized the center of the pitch and Graeme Le Saux led the sturdy defense.

Blackburn started the 1994–95 season well and led the Premier League by the end of November, but the busy holiday season took its toll. In late January, Blackburn lost for the second time that season to league favorite Manchester United. Rovers’ lead had shrunk to just one point and many thought the clock was about to strike midnight.

Three days later star United player Eric Cantona had his infamous kung-fu incident, kicking a Crystal Palace fan, and found himself banned the rest of the season. Chelsea captain Dennis Wise assaulted a taxi driver and spent the final three months of the season in jail. Arsenal winger Paul Merson missed three months of his own in drug and alcohol rehab while Gooner manager George Graham was sacked amidst a scandal.

All the stars had aligned for an outsider. Blackburn had not won a top-flight title in 81 years, last winning the league just a month before Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination that kicked off World War I. It should be said that they were not the same long-shot odds in 1995 as Leicester in 2016, but they were outsiders nonetheless who were never supposed to be in position to win the big one. They won 27 of 42 matches that season, totaling 89 points.

On the final day of the season Blackburn went to Liverpool, where manager Kenny Dalglish had played and managed for so many years, and celebrated the title. Across the country, a small, mostly forgotten club named Leicester city was relegated that same day.

Blackburn Rovers had done it. They were English Premier League champions, and fans would never be able to forget this incredible run to the title.

The next 18 months in Blackburn were memorable, too, but for all the wrong reasons.

As English champions, Blackburn received an invitation to the prestigious Champions League in the fall of 1995, where they drew a weak group with Spartak Moscow, Legia Warsaw, and Norweigan club Rosenborg. Blackburn were terrible. They won just one of their six matches, and were eliminated by Christmas.

Worn down by the extra matches across Europe, Blackburn struggled at home as well, laboring amidst the bottom half of the league table most of the year. Dalglish’s managerial prowess became a distraction as he was rumored to leave for Wolverhampton and, later, the Irish national team. Star defender Le Saux fractured his ankle in December and was out for the season. Sutton played in just 13 games and didn’t score a single goal all year. Shearer continued his incredible run as the new face of English football with 31 more goals, but it was not enough.

Blackburn struggled to a seventh-place finish that following season, a result that frankly flattered them after a miserable year.

Now no longer in European football, Blackburn were forced to sell off Shearer to Newcastle. Second-leading scorer Mike Newell also left. Dalglish moved from his managerial position to Director of Football and left the former job to assistant Ray Harford.

The following season, Dalglish also left for Newcastle. Reunited with Shearer, the duo stormed to a second-place finish as Shearer led the league with 25 goals, and other doors that had swung open the year before began to slam shut. Arsenal hired a Frenchman named Arsene Wenger who would turn the club around. Chelsea won the FA Cup under new manager Ruud Gullit, ending a 26-year trophy drought. Manchester United won the league again. The stars were back.

Meanwhile Blackburn were winless after 11 matches. Just 18 months after winning the title, they were in dead last at the bottom of the table. They finished 13th that year. Four years later they finished 19th and were relegated. They’d return quickly to the Premier League in 2001 before going through a forgettable decade of 10–6–15–15–6–10–7–15–10–15 finishes.

Blackburn weren’t good. They weren’t bad. They weren’t anything really.

In 2012, Blackburn were relegated again, and have not returned to the Premier League since. You know how six-year-olds don’t know the Yankees have ever won a World Series? Blackburn’s irrelevancy is old enough to drink. Many soccer fans couldn’t tell you the difference between Blackburn and Blackpool.

Since that incredible championship year under Kenny Dalglish, Blackburn have gone through 14 managers in 20 seasons. This summer they sold three of their last four Players of the Year. Blackburn are 4–1 favorites to be relegated again, this time down to the third tier of English football. The club has been hemorrhaging money for years and continues to be in trouble.

Blackburn aren’t Cinderella anymore. They’re more like one of the evil stepsisters or maybe one of the Seven Dwarfs. Probably Bashful, the one you always forget. They’re a footnote now, and two decades ago, they laid out the blueprint for everything not to do after an incredible run to the title.

Now it’s Leicester City’s turn. Will they outlast the grueling travel schedule of Europe and find a way to hang around the top of the Premier League? Or will Cinderella be forgotten like Blackburn Rovers, just another wild answer to a trivia question a decade from now?

The other top competitors have reloaded. Chelsea brought in Conte and stole away Leicester’s Kante. United spent big on Pogba and Ibra and Mourinho. The Pep era is here at Man City.

Leicester have their work cut out for them.

So what happens AFTER happily ever after? It’s time to find out.

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