Spot the Fox. FairNotPlay, Copa La Luna B Champions, Argentina. July 2025.

The early weeks of a new season are always for dreamers, with supporters of every club in the country looking for omens of hope, however remote or obscure they may seem. To paraphrase Rod Stewart, we all need to find a reason to believe.

For Leicester City fans, this is particularly true. The 2024/25 season was a chastening experience from start to finish, a damp squib heading into a monsoon, and then relief at the end as fans got to celebrate Jamie Vardy’s shining career with the Foxes. A beacon of hope, that anything is possible, and new beginnings. 2025/26 can once again be our year!

So, I am delighted to be the bearer of glad tidings. Far away from the King Power Stadium, in Escobar in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, the Leicester City shirt drove another Championship winning season, and promotion to the highest echelons of football. Watching the final game of the season initially took me back 30 years to 1995, and then a further 12 years to City’s last game promotion in 1983.

Last weekend, FairNotPlay, a strangely named female soccer team playing in North Champ, the leading Buenos Aires amateur league, secured promotion from the second division to the top division via a somewhat underwhelming 0-0 draw, and a drawn-out decision by the league’s ruling body, as the opposing team were found to have fielded an unregistered player. The wait for their final decision took hours longer than the actual match.

 FairNotPlay is a team comprised of former school friends, including my 24-year-old daughter, Tamara. The journey to glory was somewhat convoluted. At the start of the season, they were frankly not very good and watching them at times was painful. To their credit they clubbed together and hired a trainer, and out of chaos quite quickly came order. The trainer installed hitherto unknown concepts such as passing to each other, tackling, and a secret attacking weapon in Valentina’s Cristian Fuchs style long-throws. The throw-ins’ dubious legalities were matched only by their effectiveness.

FairNotPlay played every game in their blue Argentina second strip, except for Trinidad, an inspiring central defender in the Steve Walsh/Wes Morgan mode, who insisted on using her 2016 Leicester City shirt, which stood out proudly when they received the trophy as dusk descended.

Tamara and Trinidad, July 2025.

Why did FairNotPlay’s prolonged promotion celebration take me back to 1983? Well, the 1982/83 promotion season was far from easy for City. The new manager, Gordon Milne, had taken over from the highly popular Jock Wallace, and it took time for the team to come to terms with his ideas. Jock had left a very young team, and Gordon Milne introduced the experienced Eddie Kelly, who had a great influence. For some strange reason, he was allowed to leave, but fortunately Milne pulled another rabbit out of the hat by bringing in on-loan Gerry Daly from his former club, Coventry City, whose calm head ultimately guided us to an often unlikely-seeming triumph.

Our form picked up over the season. I returned from France to Bradford University, and went to their northern games at Barnsley, Oldham and Leeds. The decisive match that season was our visit on April 28, 1983, to Fulham, the Second Division’s form team. I listened hunched over a friend’s radio as Ian Wilson scored the winner from 25-yards, a fitting atonement for his 40-yard own-goal the previous season against Spurs in the FA Cup semi-final.

Ian Wilson celebrates his winner with Gary Lineker, Alan Smith and Steve Lynex. April 28, 1983.

City ground on, without the injured Gary Lineker, and then it came down to our final game at Filbert Street against Burnley, a nerve-ridden very underwhelming 0-0 draw. Sound familiar? To be assured of promotion, we needed to win, but the news spread on the terraces that Fulham were losing to Derby, and the draw was good enough. At the end of the game, the fans came onto the pitch, including myself, and we celebrated in front of the main-stand, and home happily. The story unfortunately did not end there.

The Derby fans, celebrating their unlikely relegation escape, had also gone onto the pitch, but two minutes before the game ended with Derby 1-0 in front. Malcolm MacDonald, Fulham’s flamboyant manager, was understandably incensed, and Fulham appealed to the Football League. A few days later, the League ruled that the result stood, and Leicester were back in the top division. Another belated celebration. 

Fast-forward to 1995, and the beginnings of North Champ as an organization. Based in Buenos Aires, I played goalkeeper for the Wanderers, a team comprising a kaleidoscope of eclectic nationalities. Of course, I played in my Leicester City shirt. I also managed the side, and in 1995 I enrolled us in a newly formed tournament, called North Champ. In my role as manager, I got to know Luis, Juan Cruz and the gang at North Champ in organizational meetings, disciplinary hearings (every team has them), and end of year parties. Excellent people, superbly organized and fair. It was with great pleasure that I discovered, 30 years on, that they are still running North Champ, and to share an abrazo with Luis.

The Wanderers never won any prizes, but it was a great sight to stand with my son Nicolás, and Luis, one of the tournament’s original organizers, watching Tamara, Trinidad and their long-time friends in FairNotPlay receive their North Champ trophy. Leicester City and North Champ, as always, are present in our lives.