Leicester City supporters have been truly blessed across the last decade, seeing several quality players flourish at the King Power Stadium.
Leicester lifted the Premier League title in 2016, achieving the greatest feat in English football to date, with their success orchestrated by Claudio Ranieri.
The squad was built on the togetherness and team spirit harnessed under Nigel Pearson but Ranieri was able to take them to the next level.
He transformed Jamie Vardy into a goal machine as he netted 24 times in the 2015/16 campaign. The Italian also had the technical talents of Riyad Mahrez to call upon, with the Algerian forming a devastating partnership alongside Vardy in attack.
But the unsung hero of that team was midfielder N’Golo Kante, whose ball-winning attributes were vital to dominating matches.
Thierry Henry once touched N’Golo Kante just to see if he was real
Danny Drinkwater was lost for words after Leicester signed Kante in 2015, as the Frenchman didn’t possess the size and stature, but he made up for that with his incredible energy in the middle of the park.
The midfielder only missed one game for the Foxes during their title-winning campaign, forming an indispensable partnership with Drinkwater.
Kante then completed a £30m transfer to Chelsea in the summer of 2016 and lifted a Premier League title for the second year running.
The Frenchman played like he was superhuman during that season and unsurprisingly won the PFA Player of the Year award in May.
In February 2017, Arsenal legend Thierry Henry visited the Chelsea training ground and in a column for The Sun, he explained how he hilariously poked the midfield metronome ‘just to check if he was real’.
“I was at the Chelsea training ground last week to see Eden Hazard and noticed N’Golo Kante wandering back to the changing rooms,” Henry wrote.
‘So I went over to him and stood in front of him. And I poked him in the chest. I had to, just to check if he was real! “You are real, you are!” I said, and he laughed.
“Well, he may be real — but he’s certainly not normal.”
- READ MORE: Leonardo Ulloa shares what led to infamous fallout with Claudio Ranieri at Leicester City
Claudio Ranieri urged Kante to run less
To leave Henry stunned by how good he was just showed what a player he was, and still is, as he continues plying his trade for Al-Ittihad in the Saudi Pro League.
Kante may now be 34-years-old but one aspect of his game that has never been lost is the energy to cover every blade of grass.
It’s an attribute that made him one of the best midfielders in the world for a good few years, so it was surprising to hear that Ranieri told Kante to stop running as much.
“This player Kante, he was running so hard that I thought he must have a pack full of batteries hidden in his shorts,” Ranieri wrote in 2016. “He never stopped running in training. I had to tell him: ‘Hey, N’Golo, slow down. Slow down. Don’t run after the ball every time, okay?
“He says to me: ‘Yes, boss. Yes. Okay.’ Ten seconds later, I look over and he’s running again. I tell him: ‘One day, I’m going to see you cross the ball, and then finish the cross with a header yourself.’ He’s unbelievable, but he is not the only key. There are too many keys to name in this incredible season.”