‘Until January, the title was still a dream’

London: It was close to midnight on Sunday at the Grosvenor House Hotel when Riyad Mahrez stood in a quiet corner of the lobby and recalled a conversation he had with his friend N’Golo Kante in January, while downstairs his Leicester City teammates could be heard celebrating another three points in the Premier League. Mahrez, 25, the newly crowned Professional Footballers’ Association Players’ Player of the Year, said that it was around January that he and fellow nominee Kante began to talk about the possibility of winning the Premier League title. The two men, both born in France, were part of a team who even then were taking the English top flight by storm, but neither of them could have imagined that on May 1 they would be in a position to win the title. At Old Trafford.

He said that the belief had really come when they won 3-1 away at Manchester City on February 6, a game in which he scored. He recalled his late father, Ahmed, who died when Riyad was 15 and who had been the driving force in his teenage years as he strove to become a professional footballer. Having said that, he could not recall another time, even as a child, when he had won an individual award. Was his career an inspiration to others who felt they might not reach such a level? “I don’t like to say it but, yes, maybe I am an inspiration for some young players,” he said. “But I don’t like to speak about myself.”