The 10 year anniversary of Leicester City’s famous Premier League title win is just around the corner.
As we all know, the Foxes defied odds of 5000/1 to win the most unlikely of league titles in the 2015/16 season under the guise of Claudio Ranieri.
The likes of Jamie Vardy and N’Golo Kante all starred in a team that was formed of a mix of underdogs, late bloomers and relatively unknown names.
That side soon announced themselves to the world on the big stage and nobody did that better than wide man, Riyad Mahrez.
One of Leicester’s best January signings of all time, Mahrez was electric for the Foxes and is one of the club’s greatest players ever.
But, before his move to the East Midlands, the winger had to rise up the ranks via the hard way.
Riyad Mahrez once went on trial at St Mirren
Mahrez is one of the best footballers in the world and has won pretty much everything there is to win at football after spells with Leicester and Manchester City.
Now at Al Ahli in Saudi Arabia, the Algerian is approaching the latter stages of his career but he can look back with pride after a difficult start.
Back when he was just 17-years-old and trying to land his first professional contract, Mahrez found himself on trial north of the border at Scottish Premiership club St Mirren.
He failed to impress though after St Mirren had concerns about his physical attributes and told him to “eat more porridge” to become a success in Scotland.
Jake Duncan, the representative who organised Mahrez’s trial told BBC Scotland in 2021″A lot of the time I had to send my scout, but he watched a game and told me I had to take a look at this boy.
“At the bottom I usually write some additional comments. For Riyad’s, I wrote: ‘Clever and technical player for his age; good dead ball exponent; but needs to eat more porridge’.”
Unsurprisingly, Mahrez shone at the Paisley club but after growing impatient waiting for an offer, he decided to take off.
“I’d had enough. It drove me crazy, Scotland. It was cold. It was abuse. It was snowing and everything… I was so cold that one day I faked an injury to go to the locker room,” he told l’Equipe in 2016.
“It was physical and it was cold. We trained in the snow! I felt that I progressed; I wasn’t allowed to go so I left in secret.
“My agent said… ‘Riyad, I’ve sent you a ticket, you take the bus right away, get off at Glasgow Station and you get on the train to the airport, then you take the flight to Paris’.
“I did not speak English at all. I left my boots at the training ground. I borrowed a bike from a guy from the hotel, I took my football trainers, I made my bag and I left without telling anyone.”
Riyad Mahrez was instrumental in Leicester’s Premier League win
After his failure to earn himself a deal in Scotland, Mahrez kickstarted his career in France and made a name for himself with Le Havre.
His performances caught the eye of the Leicester scouting team, who were able to sign him for just £450,000 in January 2014.
That second half of the season would see him lift the Championship title before helping the Foxes win seven of their last nine games to avoid relegation the following season.
2015/16 was where he really came to prominence, scoring 17 times in the title win. In the years that followed, the tricky winger tore defences apart in England in the Champions League before leaving for Manchester City in 2018 to become the most expensive African footballer of all time at that point.