Abu Dhabi: For footballing romantics, the news last week that Arsenal had made a bid for the Leicester City striker, Jamie Vardy, will have come as a bitter disappointment.
Vardy's 24 goals were fundamental to Leicester's unfathomable English Premier League triumph and the conventional wisdom is that his likely departure would precipitate the exits of other pivotal players.
And if that happens, any chance of Leicester emulating their fellow football shock merchants, Nottingham Forest, would be inconceivable.
Forest won the old English First Division, the equivalent of the English Premier League, in 1978 in their first season after winning promotion – and in the two years that followed, claimed two successive European Cups.
Their extraordinary achievements were the subject of a 2015 film, I Believe in Miracles, and Gulf News spoke to arguably their greatest star of that momentous era, John Robertson, about whether Leicester can sustain their incredible success a la Forest.
Robertson – a mercurial winger who scored the only goal when Forest won their second European Cup in 1980 against Hamburg – is delighted that the film has provided a glorious juxtaposition between past and present.
“It is incredible, because I think if Jonny [Owen, the film director] hadn't made the film, I don't think you'd be comparing Leicester's success to us,” the 63-year-old Scot said in a phone interview. “I think you'd be comparing it to what Blackburn did in [winning the Premier League in] 1995 or something like that.
“Since the film was made, it's brought us back to the attention of the public and to coincide with the Leicester thing, it’s been pretty incredible.”
So how do the heroic feats of Leicester – 5,000-1 outsiders to win the EPL at the start of last season after battling relegation in the campaign – compare to Forest's?
Robertson, who was assistant manager to another Forest old boy, Martin O'Neill, at the Foxes between 1995 and 2000, said: “Leicester have done incredibly well, there’s not a shadow of a doubt about that. We came up immediately from the Second Division and won the title immediately and then won the European Cup twice.
“We’ll have to see what happens to Leicester in the Champions League. Up to this moment, I don’t think you can compare it.
“Until they have won a couple of European Cups in a row, I don’t think you can. That’s not to say it’s not a great achievement what they’ve done.
“If they won the Champions League, I'd seriously think that that would be a similar story to us, but I genuinely don't think they will.
“If they did, well fair play to them.”
Robertson insisted his Forest side had “better, all-round players” than Leicester, although he sees one striking similarity between the two teams.
“I think Leicester’s success is built on the two centre-halves, Wes Morgan and Robert Huth. They’ve done fantastically well and are imposing types of characters. We had two as well, Kenny Burns and Larry Lloyd. We were strong defensively.”
Trevor Francis and John Roberston talk Brian Clough and 'I Believe In Miracles'
Keeping their prized assets such as Vardy will be Leicester's biggest challenge in the months to come, he believes.
“Can they keep the players? I'm not so sure they can. They might be saying all the right things at the moment.
“But I think when it comes down to it, some of the bigger clubs will be after [Riyad] Mahrez and Vardy and people like that and [N'Golo] Kante in midfield.
“When clubs come calling, I think it will be difficult for Leicester to keep hold of them. It’s just a natural thing. Players want to play for the big clubs
“I’m not saying Leicester are a little club, but they're not as big as Man United, Chelsea or Man City. If they can keep them together, they’ve obviously proved they haven’t scraped the league [in winning it by 10 points. They’ve won it by a mile, which is incredible really.”
Would Robertson advise Leicester's luminaries to stay for another season at least in a bid to continue their magical journey, or should test themselves at a bigger club?
“I would say the grass isn’t always greener. If everything at Leicester suits them, and they leave Leicester to go to one of the bigger clubs, there will be a bigger pool of players. You might not have the chance to play as many games as what they had at Leicester.
“I suppose it depends on how much you want to play and how much money you want to make. I think I’d sooner be playing.”
Robertson, whose wing wizadry led to Martin O'Neill hailing him as the most influential player in Europe for three and a half years, said he had never been tempted to sample pastures new.
In any case, he pointed out that this was an era before agents, where the club's colourful manager, Brian Clough, was omnipotent and would not entertain any offers for his major players.
“The manager would never tell you [about clubs showing an interest] in those days. I never really heard anything.
“An agent phoned me up once in about 1981 about Real Madrid, but I didn't build my hopes up on that. I'd have entertained it but certainly nationally in Britain, Forest were as good as anybody at the time and I had no real ambition to play for anybody else at that time.”
Leicester's unfathomable triumph owed much to avoiding injuries to their stars – but Robertson stresses the demands of the Champions League mean they cannot expect to enjoy a similarly untrammelled run next season.
“I think to go on and have a load of success, you have to have a squad of 25 top-quality players for Europe. I think it will be even more difficult for Leicester next season.
“You just have to get as much quality as you can in then and hopefully you steer clear of injuries. I think personally the season they’ve had, if they come out of their group and reach the last 16, that would be amazing for me.”
After winning the title in 1978, Forest broke the British transfer record with the £1 million swoop for the Birmingham City striker, Trevor Francis, who would go on to head in the winning goal in the 1979 European Cup final against Malmo.
Robertson doesn't think Leicester could – and should – make a big-name signing, however, purely for the sake of it.
“I think they've made a statement already,” Robertson, who has not worked professionally in football since 2010 when he and O'Neill left Aston Villa, said. “I’m not sure they could afford to pay that amount of money."
Robertson is full of admiration for Leicester's genial manager, Claudio Ranieri, who did not make sweeping changes on being appointed last summer.
“What I like about him is that he’s left things alone. He saw the players he had under him were already working very well the way they were doing things.
“I think that’s brilliant management to understand that and not change it. He deserves all the credit that’s coming his way.”
A staunch commitment to sports science and cutting-edge training methods has been intrinsic to Leicester's fairytale – a far cry from the less regimented days of the 1970s.
I Believe in Miracles recounts team-bonding drinking sessions and reveals that Robertson would occasionally have a cigarette at half time, although he bristles at any perception of unprofessionalism by him and his teammates.
“A story comes along like that and becomes legend. I did have a cigarette at half time occasionally, but I didn’t get caught at it.
“We weren’t out drinking all the time. There was one occasion we played Southampton before the League Cup final [in 1979]. That didn’t happen every week.
“It was only a way of making us try to relax. I think before the Southampton game we were probably a bit tense and Cloughie wanted to take the pressure off the lads a bit.
“It was great because it worked and we won [3-2] in the end.”
Robertson talks with palpable pride about that unforgettable time and is understandably unsure about his favourite memory given that Forest compiled such an extensive highlights reel.
“As someone on the film said, one minute we were playing York away and then in 1981, we were going to the Club World Championship in Japan and the band Queen were on our plane.
“But they were in first class while we were in economy [laughs].
“But it’s hard for me to think of individual moments. It was just a great journey to be on. One minute you’re at York, then in a couple years you’re playing in a Champions League final. It was just one rollercoaster ride that kept going. People say what was the most enjoyable moment.
“It’s hard to say. Winning the League Cup was a fantastic feeling. Winning the league a couple of moments later was a fantastic feeling. Winning the European Cup was unbelievable.
“It was just a long ride that we didn’t seem as if we’d come off at all.”
Pressed later on to make a definitive choice, the former Scotland international added: “When we won the league at Coventry [in 1978], that was our bread and butter. After 42 games and winning a league was a big plus for us; that was a fantastic feeling.
“Obviously winning the European Cup was a great achievement. It wasn’t the greatest of games [against Malmo] but we felt we’d earned it as we’d knocked the champions [Liverpool] out in the first round and knocked probably the second-best team [Cologne] out in the semi-final.
“We were really chuffed.”
Would Forest be competitive in the modern era against the likes of Barcelona?
Robertson laughs, before saying: “That's a good question. We’d have had 10 behind the ball for the away leg and probably eight behind for the home one.
“They're so good. I’m just pleased that I played with a bunch of guys and we reached the pinnacle of Europe a couple of times, which was fantastic. I think good players could play in any era and we were certainly good players. We were competing against one of the greatest teams around in Liverpool, who were a fantastic team.
“The Man United and Arsenals were all still there but just for those two or three years, we were the most outstanding team.”
And Robertson was British football's outstanding player – better than Ryan Giggs and with both feet, according to the skipper the Scot played alongside, John McGovern.
“It's brilliant of him to say that, I am chuffed at that,” Robertson said. “I can't come out and say he’s spot on and right. What pleased me more than anything and is nothing to with the film is times on Sky Sports TV and the fantasy football programme.
“A lot of people I played with have picked me in their team. I am chuffed with all those sorts of things.
“I will say this: I needed those boys beside me to be a good player. I needed them to get me the ball so I could show what I could do. If I didn’t get the ball, I was a luxury player.”
Listening to Robertson's blissful recollections, it would take a brave man to predict Leicester could match Forest's sustained glory and it is invidious to even attempt to do so.
Let's simply cherish the fact that miracles do, now and again, happen.
