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As Richard Mobbs stands over the sea of tributes stretching out behind the entire length of the north stand at the King Power Stadium, taking in rival shirts, teddy bears, hundreds of bouquets and even the drum that has been making a racket at home games for more than a decade, his mind strays back to the awful events that led to this extraordinary outpouring of emotion in the city of Leicester.
“I was here on the Saturday, standing outside the main reception after the match, waiting to see people,” he says. “Then Kasper Schmeichel came charging out and lifted the barrier up, a security man also came running out and dropped his radio, I picked it up and the first thing he said was: ‘The helicopter’s gone down.’
“I’d gone. I was in tears. They took me into reception and sat me down. I stayed until gone midnight, came back on Sunday morning, put my flowers against the wall and I’ve been here nearly every day since. I just feel as though I want to be here.”
Mobbs has supported Leicester for more than 50 years. He is a polo fan, too, and through following both sports got to know Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and his son, Aiyawatt, who kindly offered to buy a season ticket for him this year. Reeling off a few of the heartfelt messages he has read Mobbs sounds as if he is still struggling to come to terms with what happened after the West Ham game a fortnight ago, and also gives the impression that part of him is dreading Saturday, when football returns to Leicester for the first time since the helicopter crash that took the lives of Vichai, the club’s owner, and four others.
Asked what he is expecting at the Burnley game, the 68-year-old replies: “Tears, I’ll tell you that. It’s going to be very moving. The players have obviously had the match in Cardiff, so that’s got it a bit out of their system, but it’s different at home, where it happened. You’ll look up to the directors’ box and there will be an empty seat.”
It will be a hugely emotional day, for sure, with one of the defining images likely to be the sight of 20,000 people or more marching from Jubilee Square, in the city centre, to the King Power Stadium to honour Leicester’s former owner. “Vichai’s Walk” was the brainchild of Megan and Casey Elliott, schoolgirls who are Leicester supporters and never imagined that their idea, posted on Facebook, would take off in this way.
“It’s going to be incredible,” says Ian Stringer, who has covered the club for 11 years for BBC Radio Leicester and will be taking part in the march. “It’s just so sad that they are the same streets that were lined for four double-decker buses, one of which Khun Vichai was at the front of with this enormous [Premier League] trophy that was over half the size of him. Now we’re lining the streets for him because he’s gone. It’s the same location two and a half years on, but instead of champagne bottles on the floor there will be tears being wiped up off the pavement. It’s horrible.”
Stringer grew up supporting Leicester and says he felt compelled to travel to Thailand this week to attend Vichai’s week-long funeral. “I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum. I’ve seen the greatest days of Leicester City football club ever, as a reporter, as the local guy, and I’ve now seen the darkest days. And if there’s a chance for me to stand in the temple, which pray God there was – and I’m so grateful for the invite – and to thank him for giving us the unimaginable dream, then I had to do that.
“Vichai travelled 11,000 miles every week to come and watch the club I call home. The least I could do was to travel 11,000 miles to say goodbye to him.”
For the majority of Leicester fans the Burnley game is their opportunity to say farewell. They will be given commemorative scarves, pin badges and souvenir programmes to honour the club’s former owner and a two-minute silence will be observed before kick-off, with this also being the club’s annual Remembrance fixture. The players, who travelled to Thailand straight after the Cardiff match along with a number of club officials to pay their respects, will wear kit embroidered with Vichai’s name. Leicester, who have commissioned a statue of Vichai, will be watched by three of their former managers – Claudio Ranieri, Nigel Pearson and Craig Shakespeare.
It will be an extremely poignant occasion and reflects the huge sense of loss that hangs over a whole city, not just a football club. That feeling is evident around the main shopping centre, where even national high-street stores have posters in their window saying: “Thanks for the memories, Khun Vichai.”
“The scale of the reaction to the dreadful crash is something that you might have anticipated for a star player or a one-club manager,” says Sir Peter Soulsby, who is Leicester’s mayor and a season-ticket holder at the club. “It’s probably not something you would get for many other football club owners, if any. It’s very clear that people recognise that when King Power and Vichai bought into the club they were not just simply looking to take from the club and from the city and run it from a distance. They actually committed themselves to the city as well.
“But the fundamental thing that you cannot get away from is that he enabled us to live our dream. It is beyond doubt that there is no way at all that the club could have won the Premier League without the sort of consistent and very generous backing that he gave it, and of course that sort of success for a club is inevitably brilliant news for a city. You just cannot buy that level of international profile.”
Even those in Leicester who are not football fans came to recognise the impact that Vichai had on people’s lives, in particular with the charitable work that made a tangible difference to many. “He came across as a man of the people,” Karamjit Singh, chair of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, says. “In terms of our organisation he made a number of donations, including £2m in cash which we’ve agreed with the club will be spent on the paediatric intensive care unit at one of our sites. But other than this I think the sort of indication of the individual he was, was that he’d have children who were not well, and their families, coming to watch the match in the directors’ box.”
All eyes will, inevitably, look towards that area of the stadium at one point or another during the Burnley game as thoughts turn to Vichai’s family and the hope they can draw some kind of comfort from the love and affection shown towards a man who will remain in the hearts and minds of Leicester’s supporters. “It’s tough talking about it, really,” says Jim Steward, a lifelong Leicester fan, as he looks at all the tributes outside the stadium. “It’s not like we know the guy. But we just know what he’s done for the club and how generous he’s been.”
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