Match Of The Day Opening Titles - How Many Leicester Connections Did You Spot?

It's a pretty impressive sequence  - packing all that action into 40 seconds.  It's Match Of The Day's new opening titles for their FA Cup highlights programme. 

Quite a few Leicester references in there too - some obvious, others less so, and a couple that are frankly tenuous. But this is just a bit of fun so let's go:

1) Let's start with someone whose face should really should be on a 'Wanted' poster - for crimes against the world's oldest football competition. When Man U won the treble in 1999 they qualified to play in FIFA's ludicrous 'Club World Championship'.  Their trip to Brazil coincided with the third round of the FA Cup - and they decided to withdraw from the competition they were supposed to be defending - without a hint of protest from the authorities. In fact, the FA and Tony Blair's government (who were desperate to please FIFA with their 2006 World Cup bid underway) both backed United's move.  

We know that the FA Cup no longer has the status it had in the past - and there are many reasons why - but if you want to identity one key moment, it's right there.

But anyway, here he is, with a big Leicester City reference behind his right ear among that list of United cup winning years:

2)   March 2001

Next another hate figure  - Peter Taylor.

It was all going so well in his first season in charge at Filbert Street. We beat Liverpool in early March and were third in the Premier League table. The following week we had a seemingly easy FA Quarter Final tie - at home to Wycombe Wanderers. Champions League football, our first FA cup triumph, and years of glory beckoned. 

Incredible how quickly things can go pear-shaped. This is Roy Essandoh, whose late header gave Wycombe a 2-1 win. We then lost eight in a row in the League, went down the following year and after a financial implosion only narrowly escaped going into complete oblivion.

3)  May 2021

From hate figures to - well, we used to love him didn't we? Many years from now we'll have forgotten how it all went wrong, and we'll look back with only fond memories of this fellow and his manager: Maybe.

4)  May 1981

And Ricky Villa - has done it! 

But what has he got to do with Leicester City?

Well, a year after his famous goal won the Cup for Spurs, they were drawn against us in the semi-final at Villa Park. The day before the game, Argentina invaded the Falklands, and manager Keith Burkinshaw had to decide whether to play Villa and fellow Argentine Osvaldo Ardiles. In the end Ricky was left out and Ossie played - booed throughout by the Leicester fans. Spurs won that day of course. Come the final against QPR, Ardiles was missing. He'd diplomatically been allowed to join up with the Argentina World Cup squad earlier than he needed to. Ricky Villa wasn't in that squad and could have replaced him in the line-up at Wembley, but with British troops having just landed  at San Carlos, Burkinshaw decided to avoid any fuss and left him out.

5)   May 1972

Oh no - another hate figure. Allan Clarke was the least popular man in the Leicester City dressing room in the late 60s. After we broke the British transfer record to sign him in 1968 he saw himself as slightly above ordinary mortals like Alan Woollett, Rodney Fern and Andy Lochhead. He played in the 1969 Cup Final as we lost to Manchester City, but we were also relegated that season and he quickly moved on to Leeds, for whom he scored the winner against Arsenal in 1972 with a classic diving header:

6)  March 1999

The goal David Ginola scored at Barnsley in Round Five was almost a tribute to Ricky Villa's 1981 dribble. Here he is midway through that slalom run through the Barnsley defence:

And the connection?

Well, Spurs' next match was five days later - the League Cup Final against Martin O'Neill's Leicester City. Ginola was the big talking point in the build up to the game, but he hardly had a kick. O'Neill asked Rob Ullathorne to stay close to him - and it was similar to the job that Pontus Kaamark did on Juninho two years earlier. No happy ending this time though.

7)   April 1923

The first Wembley final. An estimated 200,000 were inside, all semblance of order having broken down as people smashed through the fences to get in.

How did our first attempt to get to Wembley end up? 

You might recall a thread on here a whlle back about the amazing aerial shot of Filbert Street taken during our third round win over Fulham. Well in the next round, we lost at home to Cardiff - legendary centre forward Len Davies with the winner. People were desperate to see this game too - and the pressure on the terraces was so great that thousands jumped over the barriers to take refuge on the pitch. The scene, as portrayed in the Leicester Mail, was a foretaste of Wembley two months later:

8)  May 1976 

Before Youri's goal in 2021, which FA Cup Final had Leicester City fans enjoyed the most? Not the four Wembley defeats, obviously. It was probably 1976, when Second Division Southampton beat Man U 1-0. That alone was good reason to celebrate, but lifting the cup was old Filbert Street hero Peter Rodrigues:

In the background there you can see Prime Minister Jim Callaghan (the last Labour PM before Tony Blair). Callaghan was MP for Cardiff South East, and used to watch Rodrigues in the early 60s when he started his career at Ninian Park.

9)  May 1971

Five years before that, another ex-Leicester man went up the 39 steps as captain of the winning side.

Frank McLintock began his career at Filbert Street in the late 50s and one of the best passages in his autobiography is where he describes the moments after we lost the 1963 Cup Final (the one that began this thread):

My most resonant and abiding memory of our defeat that day is the sound our studs made on the long, concrete tunnel that leads downhill back to the dressing room. After a win there was that rat-a-tat-tat of jubilant players almost skipping their way back. When you lose there’s a slow clack-clack – it sounds like the death march and it haunts you for years afterwards.

Wow. That's how much it meant. 

Well - did I miss anything? Tell me if I did.  Here you are - you don't even have to scroll back up:

Any other tenuous Leicester connections very welcome.