Ten years on from the magic of their Premier League title triumph, Leicester City will be playing League One football next season.
Relegation to the Championship at the close of a punishing 2024/25 season would have been viewed as enough torture, but the footballing Gods can be cruel, with the Foxes in the third tier, now, for the first time since 2009.
To say it has all unravelled overnight would be a inaccurate description, though, as this fall-off has been long coming.
Leicester's downfall had been coming
It does feel like a lifetime ago, now, that Leicester were lifting the Premier League, with Claudio Ranieri at the helm.
In reality, it has only been a decade, and the warning signs should have been there that this demise was going to occur, way back in 2022.
At the close of the 2022/23 season, Leicester would be relegated down to the Championship, having not finished inside the bottom half of the table since the 2016/17 campaign.
This signalled the end of the stablising Brendan Rodgers on the sidelines, and despite Enzo Maresca immediately lifting the Championship title the season after this relegation, Leicester never looked sure of their Premier League status.
Losing £71.1m at the end of the 2024/25 season, which culminated in a slump straight back down to the EFL, all of the club's heavy spending during their peak years had caught up to them.
On top of that, a lot of the higher earners in the Premier League, like Harry Winks, never looked bothered this season by the potential of back-to-back relegations, leading to a complete feeling of apathy around King Power, when the club and city were once engulfed in elation.
Leicester fans would love to have some of their former stars who battled hard in the Premier League to be in their ranks once more, with Shinji Okazaki, an ex-club legend, who sneaks under the radar, but has made his feelings recently known about his love for the club, when relegation was confirmed.
Okazaki's heartfelt relegation message
Okazaki wasn't always the most accurate player in front of goal during his lengthy time with the Foxes, but he still managed to have a lost-lasting career at the King Power, through his constant hard work.
As Ranieri once put it, the now-retired striker was "always there" when you needed him to be, with the less successful Leicester manager Claude Puel also noting that he "gives his body" for the team in being so unselfish and determined.
He did manage to help himself to 19 goals, from 137 games, with a Premier League winner's medal falling into his lap along the way, but he is remembered to this day for his hard-working nature, more than anything.
Now a manager in the lower leagues of Germany, the 40-year-old still managed to find time to pass on a heartfelt message to his former employers, in a touch of class befitting of such a popular ex-player.
He said, when taking to Instagram, right after their League One fate had been sealed: "I’ll support you forever, and my heart will always be with you. We stand together."
Down the line, Okazaki and Leicester's paths could cross again in the managerial realm, if the beloved ex-attacker's career as a head coach takes off, with his legendary status only reaffirmed by this touching message.
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