A King's Homecoming: Hiring a club legend is a step in the right direction
Leicester City fans got their earliest (only?) LCFC Christmas present of 2024 on December 5th, when club legend Andy King posted a photograph of himself in a Foxes training kit, footballs at his feet, signalling his homecoming. And boy, does it feel about time.
Christmas cheer might be in short supply at Leicester again, but there is something to be more thankful about. A move that brings hope, that might signal a small step in a correcting direction.
Having Andy King back at Leicester City has to be a coin in the positive karma bank.
At Wolves, one young Foxes fan had a cardboard sign asking for three points that had hastily been crossed out to ask for just one point. Even that was an ask too far. For those older fans, if Kingy’s return is the only Christmas present we’re getting from the club, it’s at least a good one.
At some stage every football fan experiences their first time seeing a player that you grew up idolising or watching every week make the next step into coaching, management or whose kids are now playing football.
For those of us who started going in the mid to late 90s and were truly inducted and became obsessed in the 2000s, there's a generation of players starting down that path.
My Leicester City journey started in 1997, so the first football player I adored was Muzzy Izzet. After he left, heartbreakingly, some defenders weaved themselves into the mix and a striker or two, but if you pressed me to commit to the next player that really captured me, it'd be Andy King.
To me King is the consummate professional, a hard-working player with a knack for goal and, to top it off, just a really friendly, good guy. He’s everything you hope your favourite players are going to be, and while Foxes fans knew and still know his worth, he flies under the mainstream radar of legends compared to the likes of Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez.
The return of Kingy has been quietly done. No big, show-off announcement from the club, but more a photograph that makes it look as if he never left. The appointment as assistant under-18s coach came around the same time as Ruud van Nistelrooy was hired. The outpouring of love on social media from fans, former colleagues and current players is a reminder that everybody who encounters Kingy seems to like him.
He was Mr Leicester for such a long time. He made headlines when we won the Premier League because of his rise and longevity at the club. The photograph of him with all the trophies and medals around him is iconic. King always embodied the kind of footballer that doesn't really exist as often these days. He could have been a one club man, had our rise not slightly outgrown him and circumstances been different.
“It’s harder to be a one-club man now but when our fans cry, I cry” - Andy King in 2019
This homecoming feels like it rights several wrongs. King was unlucky that his time at Leicester City as a player was coming to an end as the COVID season struck. We didn't have the chance to say goodbye to him (thinking about how great a full Kop Tifo could have been for him lives rent free in my mind), nor did our longest serving player and academy graduate get a testimonial. Though testimonials have more generally fallen by the wayside in modern times.
Having spent half of his life at Leicester - 15 yearson from when he signed to our academy - he left on a free with no fanfare, the last of the original guard from when King Power took over in 2010. It was an ending fit for a player for whom we’d been just another mark in a long career, not a club legend.
Kingy was never a player who needed the limelight, but it didn’t feel right. If you were to take the small, individual things that all added into the tipping point of us being relegated in 2023, losing players like King and their leadership and care within the club factor into it.
Bringing him back into the fold feels like a repair to the Leicester fabric. Something Ruud van Nistelrooy alluded to when discussing his return:
“It’s vital to have people who know the club. The DNA, it’s important to have that for the heart of the club.”
The club have missed out, willingly or not, on other players who have started making the venture into coaching or off the field duties. Despite the chant, Wes Morgan is back at Nottingham Forest, Marc Albrighton has returned to Aston Villa. The pull of a ‘home’ club seems to be unavoidable. Getting King in at Seagrave can only be an asset and a homecoming every fan can get on board with.
Union FS led the visual tributes when King first returned in 2023, alongside Nigel Pearson, in Bristol City red. King had already started looking at coaching, his last contract a player-coach combination in Bristol before his retirement.
A quick learner, King worked under 15 different managers (including various caretaker teams) during his time at Leicester, seeing a range of approaches, tactics and man management skills. King seems to be a natural in that latter skillset.
Leadership is a key quality that we seemed to lose almost all of in a two year spell. It started with King departing, and by the start of the doomed 2022/23 campaign under Brendan Rodgers, we’d lost Wes Morgan and Kasper Schmeichel as well.
Hindsight and speculation don’t help anybody but had one or two of those names stayed, even just within the club hierarchy and not as players, perhaps the relegation and subsequent financial fallout could have been different.
King likely wouldn’t have taken a coaching or more pastoral role in 2020. He was still reasonably young and more than capable of doing a job in the Championship. But Bristol City benefited from bringing in that leadership on and off the pitch. Like everybody else, Bristol fans grew to love him quickly as did his team mates.
Playing alongside Antoine Semenyo and Alex Scott (both now at Bournemouth), King had an influence on both. He talked about messaging Semenyo before his games for Ghana at the Qatar World Cup. He played alongside Scott in a midfield two and Scott was quick to credit him for support and development.
King was always quick to take young players under his wing, showing them the way. He did the same for Scott:
“I think I went on record last year and said that he was probably the best 17-year-old I have played with.
When you look at some of the players who I’ve had the privilege of playing with, you look at Ben Chilwell, Harvey Barnes, people like that who have gone on to play for England, I saw them at 17/18 and I think certainly, at 17, Scotty was ahead of those.”
Scott’s Dad, a former player himself, said the following of how King had shaped his son’s career when King announced his retirement:
“Thanks for looking after my boy, he owes you a great deal. Glad he still pops up to see you. You’re a top man with a fantastic career.” - Noel Scott
The quotes and references to King’s input, advice and mentoring are numerous:
“I had a talk with [Andy King] and he told me you only get one debut. This is going to be one to remember.” - 18 year old Dylan Kadji after making his debut for Bristol City.
At Leicester, he was frequently called out for his work to welcome new players, develop younger players and generally being somebody everybody felt they could talk to him. Numerous players cited him as an influence, or somebody who was key to their development at Leicester.
Who better then to work with the under 18s than a man who was shaped at Leicester and knows what it takes to make it and more importantly, represent the club properly. A player who has won multiple trophies, owns the honour of being our top scoring midfielder and who played in blue 379 times (12th on the all-time list). That experience is something Alex Scott was quick to reference when Kingy first started his player-coach role:
“Kingy has been brilliant for us young lads especially. The experience he has in the Championship and in the Premier League, he’s key for us.
He speaks to us all the time and the young lads are proper close with him. In his new role now it is going to be even better with the way he is going to be implementing into coaching, I’m excited for the season.” - Alex Scott
The aforementioned skills and outpouring of love show why King is a perfect candidate, but the relationships and connections he’s made over the years will be helpful too. The respect that Andy King has built for himself gives him even more credibility. Having once been a young player in Leicester digs, his advice is more likely to land and be heard.
For those wondering what his coaching style may look like, we got a clue during the tributes to Craig Shakespeare. Shakey was a man King knew very well and he cited him as key influence during an interview with The Leicester Mercury in August:
“For someone who is a young coach and wants to be a coach in the future, there are so many of his methods that I would take and try to replicate. You have to do things your own way but if there was someone I would try to replicate, it would for sure be him.
As a coach, the day-to-day sessions and dealing with people, he was the best I had in my career and somebody I owe an awful amount to because of the success we shared together.”
It’s obviously still early days for King’s impact. How much he can influence or get involved outside of the under-18s is unclear. Although knowing King, a man who knows his way around the training ground and so many of the wider LCFC staff, he will still be having a more positive wider influence.
At a time where Kasey McAteer has been asked to step up, latest injury notwithstanding, and Will Alves and Henry Cartwright are on the fringes of the squad, having a man around who’s been there and done it all has to be helpful.
The club’s identity and what kind of team we want to be has been a huge talking point in recent months and years. We’ve not been helped by switching a manager between two transfer windows, following on from a summer when a manager who perhaps did have a true identity left us.
Bringing King back into the mix, albeit more behind the scenes at under-18 level, isn’t going to solve all of our problems, but it is a sensible move. Something the club could be doing more of for those who are exploring coaching and looking at the next steps of their career.
A lot of Leicester fans dreamed of Andy King progressing through the ranks and staying at the club forever. We didn’t quite get that, but he is back and imparting his wisdom to young players who should be our future. That’s a step in the right direction.
