Elsewhere on The Athletic…
The King Power Stadium’s media room, April 2015.
“I think you must have either your head in the clouds, or been away on holiday, or reporting on a different team, because if you don’t know the answer to that question…
“Your question is absolutely unbelievable; the fact you do not understand where I’m coming from. If you don’t know the answer to that question, then I think you are an ostrich. Your head must be in the sand.
“Is your head in the sand? Are you flexible enough to get your head in the sand? My suspicion would be no.”
Nigel Pearson, Leicester’s then-manager, was talking to Ian Baker, a journalist who regularly reported on the club during that season, at a press conference after a 3-1 home defeat by Chelsea.
It was an extraordinary exchange that started when Baker asked Pearson to clarify what exactly he was referring to when he talked about the amount of criticism his players had faced that season.
To say it was surreal barely does it justice.
Moments after saying the above words, Pearson got up from his seat and left the room. Silence and disbelief eventually gave way to laughter and then the sound of mobile phones ringing as newspaper editors cleared their back pages: “Can you give us 800 words on the ostrich, please?”
Pearson had admitted a few weeks earlier that there was “an element of role-play” and “a bit of mischief” to his behaviour in press conferences.
“If he was doing it to take pressure off the players, it’s fantastic management because he was all about that. It was all about the group, all about the players,” Dean Hammond, the former midfielder who was on the bench for that Chelsea match, tells The Athletic.
“Did we have a laugh about it in the dressing room? Of course we did. And did that help take a little bit of pressure off? Yeah, of course it did because it put more limelight on him.”
Pearson was in the limelight a lot that season.
The former centre-half told a fan who was haranguing him during a game against Liverpool to “fuck off and die” and called a journalist a “prick” under his breath, aware the microphone was still on. He also became involved in a bizarre touchline altercation with James McArthur that ended with him kneeling over the Crystal Palace player with his hands around his throat.
Those incidents clearly don’t paint Pearson in a good light (he was close to losing his job after the McArthur episode), but there was also another side to the Leicester manager. Privately, he was good company: gregarious, self-deprecating and brutally honest about his flaws and mistakes. “I don’t like all the aspects of what I do and am or things I’ve done, but you’ve got to live with it,” Pearson told me in his office in 2015.
Significantly, the Leicester players liked and respected Pearson. They saw him as a manager who was loyal and fiercely protective of his squad in public and consistent with his message behind closed doors. Pearson believed in his players and created a siege mentality that helped to fuel what became known as the Great Escape that season.
Promoted the previous summer after a 10-year absence from the top flight, Pearson’s side were bottom and seven points adrift of safety with nine games remaining after a 4-3 defeat away to Tottenham on March 21. There had been the odd highlight, such as a wild 5-3 victory over Manchester United in the September when a 27-year-old former factory worker and non-League striker by the name of Jamie Vardy scored the first of his 136 Premier League goals. But Vardy had to wait another six months for his second top-flight goal, in that Spurs game, and Leicester managed only two league victories in the time between them.
But then something clicked.
Following an international break that began after that loss at White Hart Lane, a 2-1 win over West Ham on April 4 was followed by three more victories on the spin, meaning Leicester were out of the relegation zone by the time the ostrich appeared on the scene.
That Chelsea defeat (Leicester scored first but conceded twice in the last 11 minutes) and the fall-out from it could easily have derailed their momentum. Instead, the proverbial ostrich became actual ostrich burgers that were served to the players at the training ground after the team chef decided to have some fun at Pearson’s expense, and they won three of their four remaining matches to finish 14th, six points clear of the drop.
In fact, the 22 points they took from those final nine fixtures (2.44 per game, which comes out at just under 93 across 38 matches) could be described as… title-winning form.
“Claudio Ranieri? Really?”
Gary Lineker, the BBC presenter, former Leicester City striker and honorary vice-president of his hometown club, tweeted those words seven days before the much-travelled Ranieri was presented at the King Power Stadium as their new manager.
Lineker clearly didn’t think much of Leicester’s “uninspiring choice” to replace Pearson in July 2015 — and he wasn’t alone.
Harry Redknapp, the then-clubless former manager of West Ham, Tottenham and more, wondered how ex-Chelsea manager Ranieri, whose previous job had ended with him being sacked as Greece coach in November 2014 following a humiliating home defeat to the Faroe Islands, could “walk back into the Premier League”.
Asked whether he was disappointed by such comments, Ranieri replied: “No. I am an old man.”
That was typical of the Italian, who had never been the sort to get involved in a war of words. Aged 63 at the time, Ranieri had been there, seen it and done it — the Leicester job was his 16th in almost 30 years of management — and he had a reputation for being one of football’s good guys.
It says everything about Ranieri’s personality that he requested a framed photo of the other 19 Premier League managers be hung on the wall in his office at the King Power Stadium. Asked why, he explained he wanted every manager to feel welcome when they visited him there after a match.
The bookmakers didn’t expect the King Power to be Ranieri’s workplace for long. He was immediately installed as the favourite to be the first Premier League manager sacked. As for Leicester’s prospects, they were nailed on to go down and listed as 5,000-1 outsiders to win the title. The odds of the Loch Ness Monster being discovered were shorter, never mind finding Elvis alive.
On the face of it, Ranieri’s biggest battle was to win over the players, who were still coming to terms with the news that Pearson’s four-year reign as manager had come to an end.
On June 30, Leicester announced Pearson had been sacked because of what the board described as “fundamental differences in perspective between us” — in short, the acrimonious fall-out from an ill-fated end-of-season tour to Thailand, where three players, including the manager’s son, James, were accused of being part of a racist sex tape.
By the time Ranieri took over, the squad had already started a pre-season training camp in Austria. Many of them were sceptical and wondered whether ‘The Tinkerman’ — Ranieri’s nickname at Chelsea because of the constant changes that he made to the team — would try to fix something that, in their eyes, wasn’t broken.
What followed was truly extraordinary.
Etihad Stadium, February 6, 2016.
“So if you’re just joining us… #lcfc are leading 3-0 and Robert Huth is on a hat-trick!”
Christian Fuchs bursts into laughter. ‘Oh my God, I forgot that tweet. You’re making my day already!”
That message about Huth was posted on Leicester’s official Twitter account from Manchester City’s stadium with around 20 minutes remaining of a league game that Saturday lunchtime.
Leicester went on to win 3-1, only four days after defeating Liverpool 2-0 in a home game where Vardy scored a wondergoal in front of the Hollywood scriptwriter who wanted to make a film of his life story. By that stage, it was hard, almost impossible in fact, not to get swept along by Leicester’s story. Those 5,000-1 no-hopers from preseason were five points clear at the top of the table. It was all wonderfully bonkers.
“We were a group of rejects, players who were coming to the end of their careers and some youngsters who wanted to make a name for themselves – that sounds like a solid, mid-table team,” Fuchs says, smiling. “But there was great energy, great harmony within the group.”
Ranieri was no fool, tactically. He recognised Leicester’s strengths and played to them. His side finished the season in the bottom three for possession and only West Bromwich Albion had a lower pass completion rate. But nobody could argue that Leicester weren’t enjoyable to watch or effective.
“I think what we played that season was a style of football the Premier League wasn’t used to at the time,” Nathan Dyer, who spent most of that season on loan at Leicester from fellow top-flight club Swansea City, tells The Athletic. “Everyone wanted to try to play like Man City and get the ball from the back and play out. We went more direct — with quality.
“I remember coming short for the ball in training one day and Ranieri said: ‘No, no. We’re not doing that’.
“We had pace and skill up top and that was our best opportunity to get goals. I don’t think the bigger teams were ready for those kinds of balls. Vardy scored a goal in one game from a clearance from Robert Huth. We caught a lot of teams off-guard.”
Vardy scored a lot of goals full stop. Indeed, by the end of November, he had created history by scoring in 11 consecutive Premier League matches, breaking a record that was previously held by Ruud van Nistelrooy of Manchester United.
“How the players came together (for the celebration for the record-breaking goal against Manchester United), that was one of the moments of the season — we were genuinely happy for Vards,” Fuchs says. “It was the fact we made it happen for him and he made it happen for us. That’s what gives me goosebumps right now.”
Vardy’s emergence as a prolific goalscorer at the highest level was startling. Released by hometown club Sheffield Wednesday as a teenager, he played non-League football until the age of 25 and had a pre-match routine that was unconventional to say the least.
He drank port (a fortified wine) from a plastic Lucozade bottle the night before every game and then necked three cans of Red Bull plus a double espresso on matchday. According to Vardy, the latter enabled him to “run around like a nutjob”.
GO DEEPER
Golden Games: No 50, Jamie Vardy for Leicester City v Manchester United
At the other end of the pitch, Ranieri discarded the wing-back system that had served Leicester so well during the Great Escape and settled on a flat back four that featured Danny Simpson on the right, Fuchs on the left, Wes Morgan and Huth, two old-school centre-halves, in the middle, with Kasper Schmeichel in goal.
The rest of the team picked itself. Riyad Mahrez, a player with magic in his boots, played wide on the right, Albrighton provided industry on the left and the selfless Shinji Okazaki operated just behind Vardy, with Leonardo Ulloa a more than useful reserve option up front.
In central midfield, Danny Drinkwater formed a formidable partnership with a player who looked so young and unassuming that he was mistaken for an academy kid when he first arrived at Leicester that summer. His name was N’Golo Kante and he turned out to be one of the Premier League’s players of the season.
“I can remember seeing him (Kante) in the canteen and thinking: ‘Wow, is that him? He might need a high chair, not a seat!’” Craig Shakespeare, one of Ranieri’s assistants, told The Athletic in 2019.
Dyer smiles. “NG (short for N’Golo) is probably the nicest man in football. Such a gentleman. He would tackle you in training and get the ball and then he’d say: ‘I’m sorry. Are you OK?’ and he’d help you up to your feet. I’d say: ‘NG, you can’t do that. You got the ball. Carry on!’”
Steve Walsh, another of Ranieri’s assistants and also the club’s head of recruitment, had pushed relentlessly for Ranieri to sign Kante that summer. Walsh, who had worked alongside Pearson previously, also had his fingerprints on the signings of Vardy and Mahrez. In scouting terms, he had struck gold again and again.
Leicester were flying, but Ranieri’s feet never left the ground. He was too busy talking about reaching the survival target of 40 points and waving imaginary bells – “Dilly-ding, dilly-dong” was his catchphrase whenever he thought a player had switched off on the training ground or in a meeting – to get caught up in title talk.
The players saw Ranieri as a father figure. He took them to a pizzeria after they kept their first clean sheet of the season (little did they know that they would have to make their own pizzas; below), gave everyone a bell for Christmas engraved with his name, turned up for players’ birthday parties (a day early, in the case of Fuchs), and showed a human touch when it was needed.
“I think what made him special was that he was caring about the players and that’s something you either have as a manager or you don’t — and it’s a big key to success,” Fuchs adds.
“I’ll give you an example. I was suspended at one point and as I was driving out of the old training ground, I went to him and said: ‘Listen, boss, I’m on the eve of my suspension. Can I go and see my family (who lived in New York)?’. He said: ‘You know what, take five days off. Do some running and come back’.”
Fuchs smiles. “Claudio understood you were a person and not just a player.”
Incredibly, Leicester lost only three league matches all season and by the time Tottenham Hotspur, their nearest challengers, travelled to Chelsea on a Monday night in early May, the title was within touching distance.
Vardy hosted a party for the players at his home and the raucous scenes that followed later that evening, after Eden Hazard scored the equaliser that held Spurs to a 2-2 draw and confirmed Leicester were champions, went viral around the world. Leicester, those 5,000-1 pre-season outsiders, had done the unthinkable — and done it with two games to spare.
Five days later, at the final home match of the season, Andrea Bocelli was serenading the King Power Stadium pre-game wearing a Leicester shirt, with Ranieri standing proudly alongside him in the centre circle, the Premier League trophy glistening in the background and 30,000 supporters wiping tears from their eyes.
It was beyond beautiful.
California, July 2016.
As Ranieri urged his players to press with greater intensity during a training session at the home of MLS side LA Galaxy, the reporters who had been watching Leicester in League One (English football’s third tier) only seven years earlier, playing against Yeovil, Hereford and Hartlepool, started to wonder whether all of this was a dream.
Los Angeles certainly felt like a long way from Belvoir Drive, where Ranieri and his players trained in the middle of a housing estate back home, and it was hard not to suppress a smile when you looked at the long line of dignitaries and celebrities who wanted to be associated with Leicester.
Sixties pop star Engelbert Humperdinck, who grew up in Leicester, was happily chatting away to Alan Birchenall, the former Leicester player turned club ambassador, and later in the day Fuchs and Okazaki took part in a penalty shootout with comedy actor Will Ferrell.
In nearby Santa Monica, people queued for hours to have the opportunity to meet Morgan, Mahrez and Schmeichel at a sportswear shop.
As for pre-season friendlies, Leicester’s next two opponents were Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. Twelve months earlier, they had warmed up for their title-winning campaign by playing lower-division teams including Lincoln and Mansfield.
Lionel Messi? He was swapping shirts with Marc Albrighton.
It was fun — a lot of fun — but it was never going to last.
In fact, the Ranieri fairytale came to an abrupt end seven months later, in the rather less salubrious surroundings of East Midlands Airport.
Leicester had just returned from losing 2-1 to Spain’s Sevilla in the first leg of a Champions League last-16 tie when Ranieri was called into a private room at the airport and told by Jon Rudkin, the director of football, that his services were no longer required.
It felt brutal and Ranieri was clearly hurt. The following day, he issued an emotional statement saying that his “dream died” with the news he had been sacked.
Leicester were heavily criticised, with Lineker, who had initially been staunchly against Ranieri’s appointment, describing the decision as “inexplicable, unforgivable and gut-wrenchingly sad”. Liverpool counterpart Jurgen Klopp said the move was as “strange” as 2016’s Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump as US president, while Jose Mourinho reacted by turning up for his press conference at Manchester United wearing ‘CR’ initials on his kit in support of Ranieri. Even Eddie Jones, then the England rugby union coach, expressed his sympathy.
The spotlight was turned onto the players, who stood accused of leading a rebellion and forcing Ranieri out. “I don’t believe rumours the players spoke to the Leicester owners about sacking me. I can’t believe the players killed me. No, no, no,” Ranieri said a couple of months later.
What nobody would dispute is that Leicester in 2016-17 were unrecognisable from the team that won the title. Key players — Vardy, Mahrez and Drinkwater among them — lost form. Kante had moved on to Chelsea, leaving a huge hole, and the three big signings brought in that summer — Islam Slimani, Ahmed Musa and Nampalys Mendy — all struggled to make any impact.
Indeed, Leicester were only a point and one place above the relegation places at the time of Ranieri’s sacking and, with 13 games to go, there were genuine concerns at the club that they could become the first English champions to be relegated since Manchester City in 1937-38.
Assistant Shakespeare took over in a caretaker capacity and the turnaround was instant. In fact, it was so quick that it raised some uncomfortable questions. Where had these performances been hiding? Had Ranieri’s tactics really been that bad? Were the players trying to prove a point? Could Leicester’s owners now feel vindicated?
Either way, Leicester won six matches on the spin, including the second leg of that tie with Sevilla on a special night at the King Power Stadium to go through 3-2 on aggregate and join teams including Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus in the quarter-finals.
“We were the last English side in the competition,” then-captain Morgan tells The Athletic proudly. “To walk out on a Champions League night onto the pitch and hear the music and feel the vibe and go to places in Europe — incredible. They were magical occasions. The two nights against Sevilla and Atletico Madrid were amazing.”
Atletico were the team who brought Leicester’s Champions League odyssey to an end, 2-1 on aggregate. But the soundtrack to the season went on for a few more weeks afterwards.
“Champions of England, we know what we are!” sang Leicester’s supporters.
“I had left the stadium. I turned on the news and could not believe what was happening.”
The sadness in Fuchs’ voice is unmistakable.
We are talking about October 27, 2018 — the darkest day in Leicester City’s history.
A helicopter carrying Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, Leicester’s owner, and four others — King Power staff members Kaveporn Punpare and Nusara Suknamai, and pilots Eric Swaffer and Izabela Lechowicz — had crashed shortly after taking off from the centre circle at the club’s stadium.
Leicester had played West Ham at home earlier that Saturday and some of the players were still at the ground when the helicopter spiralled out of control and burst into flames as it crashed in an overflow car park close to the south east corner of the stadium.
“There was no information on the group chat,” Fuchs adds. “I thought the only way I could get news was on Twitter. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, right in front of the TV, and just constantly refreshing my feed. Two hours passed. I thought I’d been sitting there for five minutes.
“Emotionally, when I was able to talk to my wife, that’s when you have to let go… fuck. When you see those pictures you kind of know what the outcome will be. But when you don’t have clarity, you don’t want it to be true.”
Goalkeeper Schmeichel dashed to the scene of the crash.
“I ran straight out of the tunnel and round to that side of the stadium,” he told Sky Sports a few days later. “People over that side of the stadium hadn’t seen what had gone on, so I came sprinting out, shouting for people to call the police. One of our security guards saw me and ran after me.
“We managed to get close — our security guard got closer than I did — and he (the security guard) tried to get in and do something, but it was very evident from the heat that there was nothing anyone would be able to do. It was horrifying, horrible, to be that helpless.”
The outpouring of emotion that followed was a reflection of the way that a man known as Khun Vichai was regarded in his native Thailand, in Leicester and all over the world. The flowers laid outside the King Power Stadium stretched as far as the eye could see and the personal tributes were deeply moving.
The 60-year-old was so much more than a wealthy football club owner. A billionaire who made his fortune in the duty-free business, Khun Vichai had become emotionally invested in the club and the city from the moment he bought then-Championship Leicester for £39million in 2010. In football’s era of the absentee, hands-off owner, he was present and engaged.
His generosity warmed hearts. He donated millions to local charities and towards a new children’s hospital, handed out free season tickets on his birthday, pledged £100million to build a new, state-of-the-art training ground for the club and, of course, bankrolled the success of the team that came to mean so much to him.
The Leicester squad loved him back. A regular at matches, Khun Vichai got to know the players personally, treated them to nights out and bought them a BMW each after they won the title. Vardy invited Khun Vichai and his family to his wedding and Fuchs even talks about dancing with him on one occasion.
“This doesn’t exist,” the Austrian said. “No other owner would do that.
“Look at all the owners of all the Premier League clubs and I don’t know anyone you can just go up and talk to without making an appointment with people five layers below him.”
The sense of loss at the club, and around the city, was profound.
By February 2019, Leicester were drifting. Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, Vichai’s son, had taken over as chairman of a club who were now looking for a fourth permanent manager in less than two years.
Shakespeare had briefly succeeded Ranieri on a permanent basis before being replaced by Claude Puel early in 2017-18. The softly spoken Frenchman – “Whispering Claude”, as he became known – delivered a ninth-place finish in his debut season, but the football was uninspiring and there was little in the way of a connection with the players or the supporters.
“Leicester have good players, they just don’t have a manager who can get the best out of them,” Peter Schmeichel, Kasper’s father and Manchester United great turned TV pundit, said a week before Puel was sacked following a run of seven defeats in nine matches.
Those good players included Ben Chilwell, James Maddison, Harry Maguire, Youri Tielemans and Jonny Evans, in addition to several holdovers from the title-winning side. The potential at Leicester was enough to tempt former Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers to swap Scottish giants Celtic, where he was closing in on a third successive domestic treble, for a team who were 12th in the Premier League. Rodgers outlined his objective at the outset: to “disrupt the market” and bring European football back to the King Power.
When the Northern Irishman introduced himself to the players in the dressing room after watching a 2-1 victory over Brighton from the stands, he stopped when he got to Vardy. “I shook his hand and said to him: ‘I’m glad you’re here!’” Rodgers said.
Vardy had a new lease of life under Rodgers and would go on to win the Premier League’s Golden Boot the following season, at the age of 33.
Leicester were a team reborn, too.
They put together an eight-match winning run during that 2019-20 campaign which included beating Southampton 9-0 — matching the record for the biggest-ever Premier League victory. Leicester were second in the table at that point and there was a sense Rodgers was building something special.
“Brendan was highly talked about when he arrived,” Morgan says. “I remember he did a presentation of his ideology, his way of playing. I’ve never experienced anything like that before with a manager. He outlined his short-term, medium-term and long-term plans, his expectations, how we were going to go about it. It was unique.”
With nine matches remaining in Rodgers’ first full season, Leicester were third, 10 points clear of Sheffield United in fifth place and in an excellent position to qualify for the Champions League.
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic and a total shutdown of the Premier League and beyond.
When Leicester returned to action 14 weeks later, their season fizzled out. They won just two and lost five of those nine matches, including a winner-takes-all meeting with Manchester United at the King Power on the final day.
Rodgers pointed out their eventual fifth-placed finish was the second highest in the club’s history, yet it was hard to escape the feeling that Leicester, after spending 298 days in the top four, had allowed Champions League football to slip through their fingers.
Aware of the need to regroup, Rodgers gathered the squad at The Grove Hotel in Berkshire for a team-bonding break and debrief. Or, to put it another way, to discuss “the elephant in the room” after they had not only missed out on the top four but lost to Aston Villa in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, too.
Staff and players talked about adopting a big-club mentality to challenge for silverware.
“Resetting our ambitions” was the phrase Rodgers used — and their reward was around the corner.
Wembley Stadium. May 15, 2021.
“Our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them” read a giant banner in the top tier of Wembley Stadium, next to an image of Khun Vichai.
It felt as though Leicester’s late owner was looking down and smiling on his club in more ways than one on that Saturday evening.
The FA Cup was special to Khun Vichai. It was a trophy he had always wanted to win and one that had eluded Leicester for their first 137 years. They had lost four previous finals, the most recent in 1969.
“I’d love to win it for Khun Vichai and his family,” Rodgers said on the eve of the 2020-21 final against Chelsea, the club where he had begun his coaching career. “His spirit and presence will be with us.”
Chelsea would win the Champions League final two weeks later, so it was going to take something special to beat them.
Youri Tielemans provided that moment. The Belgian’s wonderful 30-yard strike arrowed into the top corner, sending 6,000 Leicester fans — restrictions to limit the spread of Covid-19 had only just started to be lifted and the crowd was limited to 20,000 people — into delirium.
That Tielemans had scored in the 63rd minute, the age Khun Vichai would have been, added to the sense it was always going to be Leicester’s day. Schmeichel was outstanding in goal and even a tight VAR call went in Leicester’s favour.
There were emotional scenes afterwards as Schmeichel beckoned Aiyawatt, Khun Vichai’s son, onto the pitch, where he was embraced by Rodgers and his players in a way that would have been unthinkable for almost anyone else in his position.
“The jealousy I feel knowing an owner can be like that. It breaks my heart,” Ian Wright, the former Arsenal striker and BBC pundit, said.
Aiyawatt closed his eyes and cradled the trophy in his arms as the Leicester supporters serenaded him with a song that had reverberated around Wembley from start to finish that day: “Vichai had a dream…”
Although Leicester won the FA Cup in 2020-21, there was an unwelcome sense of deja vu about what happened in the Premier League, as Champions League qualification slipped away on the final day for a second successive season.
Financially, Leicester were pushing hard but there was still a huge disparity between their revenue and spending, compared to the established Big Six – Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs.
Part of Leicester’s strategy was to sell one key asset each summer and reinvest that money in younger talent. Kante (£30million to Chelsea in 2016), Drinkwater (£35m to Chelsea in 2017), Mahrez (£60m to Manchester City in 2018), Harry Maguire (£80million to Manchester United in 2019) and Chilwell (£50million to Chelsea in 2020) all moved on for substantial fees.
But the policy changed in the summer of 2021.
The pandemic had an impact on the transfer market as clubs rowed back on spending to cut their losses, causing player valuations to fall. In theory, this would have been the right time to sell Tielemans, who had two years left on his contract. Instead, Leicester held onto him and their other big names and backed Rodgers with a £55million net spend.
It was a gamble that didn’t work.
The bulk of that money went on Patson Daka, Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard — none of whom could be classed as a success. In fact, the signing of Vestergaard, brought in at short notice to replace Wesley Fofana after the young Frenchman suffered a badly broken leg in pre-season that would keep him out until the following March, proved to be a terrible mistake. The Danish centre-back has started only six Premier League matches for Leicester in two seasons.
On paper, the 2021-22 season doesn’t look too bad. Leicester won the Community Shield by beating champions Manchester City at Wembley, finished eighth in the Premier League (four points off Europe) and reached the semi-finals of the new, third-tier Europa Conference League, where they were beaten 2-1 on aggregate by eventual winners Roma.