Article from the Times 31/07/19 if anyone is interested (Part 1)
Andy King is that rarity in the modern game, a one-club man, so in love with Leicester City after 379 games and 64 goals that he willingly and selflessly handed over the prized No 10 shirt to James Maddison because, for him, it is about the badge on the front not the name on the back.
He’s 30, lean and fit after preparing for pre-season with private training sessions in Portugal, and determined to convince Brendan Rodgers that he can still contribute to a Leicester side full of emerging talent and with ambitions of breaking back into the top six. He’s realistic, too, appreciating the quality of youngsters at Leicester, like Maddison.
With the No 10 shirt, King also sent Maddison a message: “It suits you mate, I hope it brings you as much pride, success and happiness as it did for me”. King now wears No 37. Sitting in a hotel on the edge of Leicester, King shrugs about the numbers game. “The shirt is about the name on the front, not the back. If it’s blue and it’s got a Leicester badge on then I will wear it regardless of what number is on the back.”
If he stays, Leicester know they have a player with the club’s best interests at heart, who can mentor young players and deliver occasional goals from midfield. If King leaves, his new employers know they are bringing in a fabulous role model and professional. King has always had strong values, instilled by his parents growing up in Maidenhead. “Hard work, always being a good person, trying to help others,” lists the Wales international.
King’s unique in the game, having won League One, the Championship and, most famously, the Premier League in 2016 with Leicester. “But it is getting harder to be a one-club man, especially in the Premier League with the amount of signings clubs make and the instability around managers,” King continues. “I look at Mark Noble. To be at a club of West Ham’s stature his whole career, and see him still contributing so much and doing so well (at 32), I’ve got a lot of respect for him.
“When you have a feeling for a club as I do with Leicester, you want to stay. We’re a family. It starts off as team-mates, then friends and now they’re like family. Wes (Morgan), Vards (Jamie Vardy), Matty James, Kasper (Schmeichel). Friends for life. If you saw my wedding in the summer it was a ‘who’s who’ of Leicester over the past 10-15 years!
“Leicester were the ones who took a chance on me when I got released by Chelsea at 15. It was the start of the era when Chelsea were buying kids from abroad. The game after we won the league, we played Chelsea away and I walked out at Stamford Bridge as a Premier League champion to a guard of honour, thinking 11 years ago they released me saying ‘you need to forge your own path somewhere else’.”
He has done, demonstrating a determination that has made his name a byword for professionalism in the game and a fan favourite at Leicester. King was a beacon of hope in their dark days, fighting to get out of League One, then out of the Championship and the “heartache” of two play-off defeats, sharing the supporters’ pain. “They know I cried when the club cried,” he says.
They have shared so many special moments too. “I still can’t believe it now,” King says of that 2016 title triumph under Claudio Ranieri. “It will seem an even more unbelievable story the more time goes on.”
He still resents suggestions that Leicester’s powerful dressing room forced Ranieri out later in February 2017. “Some stuff written was massively unfair and definitely untrue about the changing room. The lads had nothing but the utmost respect for the manager. They’d never dream of doing anything like some things were written, but it is a strong dressing room.
“I spoke with Frank Lampard last year when I went to Derby (on loan), and he said they had the same thing thrown at them at Chelsea. But to be a successful team you need to have a strong changing room: if people are stepping out of line, not being punctual, not giving 100 per cent, you need players in there to point it out.”
He underlines the point about how senior Leicester players pass on the dressing-room values. “We actually had a meeting about it when we were away in Evian this pre-season. It was about the togetherness we’ve always shown, sticking together, and now it is about ensuring the great young players at Leicester City now, British and some foreign, also buy into that and take that on.”
After Ranieri left, Craig Shakespeare took over and then Claude Puel arrived, immediately sidelining King. “If Claude could have had everyone from the title-winning team out, he would have done,” King says. “He wanted everything associated with that era gone.
“With myself, someone who has been there so so long, knows everyone in the training ground, knows why the cub have been successful, maybe he thought that was going to hamper the new regime he wanted to bring in. But I would have knuckled down and worked hard for him as I have for every manager. Then he takes ‘Vards’ out the team, so maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself because if he’s taking Leicester’s talisman, who’s scored so many goals, out of the team, then that made me think he would have had everyone from the 2016 team out.
“I thought as a coach some of the stuff he tried to say was right. The way he went about it wasn’t great. I didn’t have a conversation with him the whole time he was here. He wasn’t really chatty with anyone. I was getting frozen out. I was thinking, ‘How is this guy who’s been here two weeks, telling me who’s been here 10 years that I’m the one who has to leave?’ That was hard to take.
“I’d go into Leicester in the afternoon, and feel embarrassed with people coming up, going, ‘What’s happened? Do you not play for Leicester anymore?’ So I went to Swansea (in January 2018). It felt really strange going into another training ground, putting on another shirt.
“But I really enjoyed it at Swansea. Back in Wales, which was something I wanted to do. A good style of football, the manager Carlos Carvalhal was really good, bubbly. But it did feel weird.”
On King’s return last summer, Puel again blanked him. Leicester’s highly-respected director of football, Jon Rudkin, spoke to King. “Jon took it upon himself to try to keep me in the loop, which was really good of him, and I am grateful for that.” Puel did not bother to inform King that he would not be in the 25-man Premier League squad. “That killed me.”
He will never forget Puel’s poor handling of the situation. “I’ve started my badges with the FAW and if I go on and be a manager, I’ll always make sure I speak to the player because of the experience I had with him (Puel). I would have nothing to say to him if I saw him now. I wouldn’t ask him how he is. We didn’t have a relationship when he was at the club so why should we have one now? But he did teach me a valuable lesson in terms of how you treat people.”
Out in the cold, King was not at the stadium on October 27, the worst day in the club’s history when Leicester’s much-loved owner, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, died in the helicopter crash at the King Power. “It was horrendous, the worst feeling I’ve ever had. I wasn’t at the game. It was my birthday weekend, Kasper called me and said, ‘It doesn’t look good.’ I was out with my family and I said, ‘We’re going to have to go.
“I just felt emptiness. It was unbearable. For it to happen to him, such a good guy, what he’d done for all of us, that whole Premier League-winning season, even the Championship-winning season, he’d put that all in place, he’d signed the players, appointed the managers, created the spirit. He masterminded it. The effect Vichai had on our lives as players…everything we have is because of him.
“It was the way he treated people. Team spirit comes from socialising together which at Leicester we’re really good at and Vichai was almost the driving force behind that: he’d take the team out for meals, the staff out, he’d want to show the lads off in Thailand, and the lads like feeling ‘we’re with him, and he’s a powerful figure’. He knew about everyone’s family. He moved the Dubai training camp back because I was having my engagement party.
“It was the first time since Claude had been in charge where I felt, ‘Right, I’ve got a role to play here’. It really doesn’t matter whether I’m playing or being frozen out, I knew the lads were going to need an arm around them.” Leicester rallied, showing their strength, the substance that Vichai embodied and encouraged. “He would have been proud of what he saw. Top (Vichai’s son), Susan Whelan (chief executive) and Jon were unbelievable, the strength of character they showed.
“I was thinking, ‘Would Top want to come to the stadium ever again, where his dad’s just had a helicopter crash?’ He was there the next day, to meet the players, put flowers down, He addressed everyone. The courage he showed. Top is going to be so determined that he carries on that legacy for his father. They were so close.
“The lads are going to be so out to win a cup for Vichai, and for Top. He’ll want to do it so much for his dad to show, ‘look this is for you, my tribute, you should be proud of me’. The lads are really close with Top and will really feel that and want that for him. It’s very powerful. It runs the whole way through the club. Everyone in the city has been behind the club, the whole footballing world has shown unbelievable support.”
Because Vichai made people dream. “Vichai always said, ‘by us winning the league made everyone think that if you put your mind to something you can achieve anything’. There were so many messages from so many people, from a five-year-old who’s been supporting Leicester for two years or an 85-year-old who’s supported Leicester his entire life. Vichai had such an effect. They’ll always remember him.”