Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha has shown how a football club should be run
IF there was ever a model for how to do things right as an owner of a football club, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha has shown the way.
For whatever reason, he decided to take a punt on Leicester in 2010, buying them from Milan Mandaric for £39million, just a year after they had gone up from League One to the Championship.
And not only did Srivaddhanaprabha make them an established Premier League club — he gave fans the greatest time of their lives when they won the title in 2016.
It was the biggest shock in English football history, a miracle which we will never see the like of again.
And the Leicester owner was the one that made it all possible.
You can make a small comparison to when I was at Blackburn and we won the league in 1995.
We had a brilliant owner in Jack Walker and that was his dream. But the big difference was that everyone saw Blackburn coming.
Nobody saw Leicester coming — it was just totally out of the blue.
Their recruitment around that time was just superb, getting players like N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez on the cheap.
And the owner made the brave decision to sack Nigel Pearson and appoint Claudio Ranieri.
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That was frowned upon by a lot of people at the time but it turned out to be a masterstroke.
I, like everyone else, was waiting for their bubble to burst that season.
I just thought it was a matter of time before their results dipped. But the way they performed was just incredible.
Every single player in that team just clicked at the right time.
They got on a run and there was this snowball effect which was impossible to stop.
We all remember the scenes from the parade here in England, as well as the one in Thailand and Srivaddhanaprabha oversaw all that — he gave that to Leicester.
Even since then, he has kept Leicester towards the top end of the Premier League.
And I think the fact that players like Jamie Vardy and Kasper Schmeichel have stayed at the club says a lot about the owner.
There just seemed to be an amazing warmth towards him from both the players and supporters.
Unlike many other owners of football clubs, he understood the fans and he gave hope to a community.
Jack did that at as owner of Blackburn, and Freddy Shepherd did the same when he was chairman of Newcastle and signed me.
But they were brought up in those areas.
At Leicester, this was a billionaire from Thailand who came in and saw a business opportunity — but he went about things in the right way.
He invested heavily in the football club and was about to spend another £100m on a new training ground.
But he also invested in the community. He gave his own money to local hospitals and charities.
And he showed great generosity towards his supporters, including giving out free beers, scarves and season tickets.
He formed a special bond with those fans which is so rare in modern football, especially from a foreign owner.
Right now, it will be an incredibly difficult time for the whole football club. I cannot compare this to anything I experienced during my own playing career.
Leicester were meant to have a home game against Southampton in the Carabao Cup tomorrow.
But I’m not surprised that has already been postponed.
My thoughts go out to the Srivaddhanaprabha family and everyone involved at Leicester City.