THE totally justified hype surrounding Leicester City’s increasingly inevitable Premier League title is threatening to overshadow some other fairytale scenarios emerging from what has been a magnificent English soccer season.
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The Foxes are the headline act – there’s simply too many angles to the story for them not to be.
In the year that the body of Richard III was discovered in the city, the team from King Power Stadium take the crown with an assistant coach called (Craig) Shakespeare.
Not even you-know-who could take a break from celebrating (if that's the right word) the 400th anniversary of his death to write a script of such drama, tragedy and comedy.
As life-long Leicester fan Gary Silke said about the prospect of clinching the title at Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground, famously dubbed the Theatre of Dreams by Bobby Charlton, “it has never hosted a dream quite as ridiculously unlikely as this”.
The FA Cup final can always be relied upon to throw up a Hollywood storyline or two but this year’s finds new ground.
If both semi-final results had been reversed the final would be a repeat of the 1984 version when Watford chairman Elton John was left pondering I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues after watching his Watford side lose to Everton.
Instead, alternative North-West and outer London teams were still standing with Manchester United and Crystal Palace assuring a repeat of 1990.
That year’s decider managed to produce one of the best finals in living memory, courtesy of Ian Wright scoring two goals from the bench with a recently-broken leg, and also one of the worst replays, decided by a solitary goal from someone virtually unheard of either before or since - take a bow Lee Martin.
Relegation from the Premier League has become a cut-throat battle between Norwich and bitter North-East rivals Sunderland and Newcastle to see who gets to join already-doomed Aston Villa in going-down land.
Meanwhile the nation’s third North-East giant, Middlesbrough, is in another three-horse race for the two automatic promotion spots into the Premier League.
That race, with Burnley and Brighton, has been a tale of heart-stopping, pivotal late goals.
Between them, the three sides have not lost in a collective 43 matches. That sequence included Burnley claiming 92nd and 93rd minute equalisers against Middlesbrough and Brighton respectively.
Boro struck injury-time winners against Hull, Reading and Bolton while Brighton did the same against Notts Forest.
It is generally accepted that 87 points assures promotion. With two games to go, all three sides had that many. It is feasible that one could amass 90 points and still not go up.
Whichever luckless team finishes third will have to try its luck in the play-offs for the right to share the estimated $190 million bonus of Premier League promotion.
Burnley have methodically established a post-war record by going 21 games unbeaten since Boxing Day and sit in pole position courtesy of the final twist to this scintillating tale, namely the fixture list having Brighton playing at Middlesbrough in the final game of the season next weekend.
I did say it was a magnificent season.
Like any good Shakespearean drama, there are plenty of cracking characters to spice up the storyline.
Palace’s return path to Wembley has been piloted by manager Alan Pardew, a member of the side that lost 26 years ago having scored the extra-time winner in the semi-final against a Liverpool side that had beaten them 9-0 seven months earlier.
The former Premier League manager of the season is perhaps best summed up by his most requested Google search being “Alan Pardew headbutt”.
Another volatile character integral to the ever-thickening plot is Joey Barton, whose career, according to wikipedia, has “been marked by numerous controversial incidents and disciplinary problems”.
Twice convicted on charges of violence with a brother serving life for murder, Barton even has a history of assaulting his own teammates.
However, he saves some of his most savage blows for Twitter.
When he was in the QPR team relegated from the Premier League two years ago, Barton took aim at one of the teams taking their place.
“At least we don’t have to live in Burnley,” he Tweeted along with a picture of the Lancashire town’s desolate town centre.
A Clarets fan told him he had just blown his chances of ever signing for the club, to which Barton replied: “Gutted. Always dreamed of living there.”
Obviously, he subsequently joined Burnley and last month was named in the Championship team of the year.
Back in the Premier League and while Leicester’s champagne was kept on ice when they failed to clinch the title at Old Trafford on Sunday, the fixture reintroduced another brilliant bit-part character in this comedy of errors.
Asked whether it was acceptable for someone to grab a player’s hair, as City’s Robert Huth did to Marouane Fellaini, Manchester United’s brilliantly frank manager Louis van Gaal replied: “Only in sex masochism, then it is allowed.”
Hopefully the Dutchman, who earlier this year called a reporter “Fat man” during a press conference, stays in similar form for the FA Cup final.
All of which is infinitely more interesting, and indeed newsworthy, than another Premier League title going to the billionaire big four of Chelsea, Arsenal or either Manchester club.
As Silke noted recently: “King Richard III was probably hoping to rest in more peace than this.”