The Biggest Cinderella Soccer Teams Since 2000

There are only a couple more days until the 2019-20 Premier League starts, and as kick-off approaches, 888 is lining up all the odds for the upcoming season. As expected, Manchester City and Liverpool are predicted to be top of the table, with Man City starting the season at +275 to repeat as league champions, while Liverpool sits at a surprisingly high +900. Not far behind are the usual contenders Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal. Outside the top 6, odds are long, as they seemingly always are. Which brings us to the annual question that the other 14 teams in the top flight ask at the beginning of the year: Could they pull a Leicester City? Could they start the year at 5000-1 underdogs and stun everyone with an improbable run to the title? I mean, it happened, and not that long ago? Who says lightning can’t strike twice?

Well, first, there’s a lot of money that stands in the way of that lightning. And by money we mean the salary budgets of teams like Liverpool (£108 million) and Man United (£133 million) versus those of, say, AFC Bournemouth (£32 million) or Wolverhampton (£21 million). But if you too have the feeling that this is going to be the year for Brighton & Hove Albion (+150,000 to win the title) or, dare we say, Norwich City(+200,000 to win the title), you would be a very happy person, not to mention a very rich person and you could have articles written about you. To get you dreaming about what you’d do with your newfound wealth, let’s take a look at some of the biggest Cinderella stories since 2000 that shocked the world of soccer, and gave eternal hope to the underdog.

UEFA Euro 2004 Final: Greece 1-0 Portugal

Greece went into the tournament hoping to win just one game. (They hadn’t yet won a game in any major competition in the history of the team.) Instead, they won the whole thing. Even though they beat Portugal in the Group Stage, they faltered against the rest of their group, only squeaking into the knockout stage on goal differential. After employing a solid zone defense against the Zidane/Henry/Pires-led France squad and coming away with a 1-0 upset, they beat a favored Czech team in extra time, once again 1-0. 

The re-match was thus set against hosts Portugal, where they would face off against Deco, Luis Figo and a 19 year-old Cristiano Ronaldo at the grand Estadio de Luz in Lisbon. Once again, Greece settled back to halt Portugal’s aggressive attack, and shocked everyone with an Angelos Charisteas goal in the 57^th minute to win it for the underdogs. While many pieces were written about how Greece played an ugly style of soccer, a slogan on the team bus summed it up best from the winners’ point of view. “Ancient Greece had 12 Gods. Modern Greece has 11.”

Las Liga 2014: Atletico Breaks The Barca/Real Duopoly

Let’s face facts. Atletico Madrid was no Greece. Their 2014 line-up featured a front line of David Villa and Diego Costa, and, in the same season, they made it to the Champions League Finals against crosstown adversaries and fellow La Liga counterparts Real Madrid. But still, La Liga was not something that Atletico Madrid was ever tapped to win. Barcelona or Real Madrid had won the title for the past 10 years, with the annual super-team of Barca hoping to win it all again for the fourth time in five seasons. Their line-up was an all-star team of Alves, Alba, Pique, Fabregas, Iniesta, Xavi, Messi, Neymar, Sanchez (is that enough?) 

So when the two teams came into the last game of the season with the home team Barca needing a win to retain the league title, they were the prohibitive favorites. But in front of 98,000 fans at Camp Nou, Diego Godin goal right after halftime cancelled out Alexis Sanchez’s first half strike, and Atletico held on to a 1-1 tie to win the title. It was a final day like no other.

Premier League 2016: Leicester City Wins The Title 

The Mariners win the World Series! The Knicks win the NBA Finals! The Browns are Super Bowl champions! (OK, the way things are headed that last one might not be so off base.) But still, imagine all these happening. In reality, they just couldn’t. 

But in 2016, they did! In the form of the Premier League’s bubble boys Leicester City, who just a year earlier were sitting bottom of the table before winning 7 of their last nine (after only winning 4 previously) to escape relegation. Then, magic took over. But how? Was it manager Claudio Ranieri, who was brought in at the beginning of the season to help them once again avoid the drop. Was it Jamie Vardy, who just a few years earlier was playing for Fleetwood Town in the 5^thDivision? Is it Premier League throwaways Andy King, Danny Drinkwater, and Kasper Schmeichel, who had been through rough times at Leicester City through 2^ndDivision woes since 2012? 

It was all of them and more, including fellow reclamation projects Riyad Mahrez, N’golo Kante, and Shinji Okazaki, who tore through the league all season, topping the table from start to finish, with just three losses in 36 games, and holding off Tottenham on the last game of the season thanks to an amazing Chelsea comeback.

Will we see another Cinderella like Leicester City this year? Could it be Wolves? Or perhaps Manuel Pellegrini’s West Ham? Who knows. But, man, wouldn’t that be an awesome bet to place?