Leicester City was a different club when Andrej Kramaric arrived and he may well feel aggrieved when he looks back on his short-lived stint.
It seems crude to dilute Leicester City’s remarkable Premier League triumph but rarely has one team’s success been so heavily tied to a trademark move. After all, when we think of Leicester, we think of Jamie Vardy exploding into space and thumping the ball into the net.
On the way to obliterating Ruud Van Nistelrooy’s long-standing record for netting in the most consecutive league games, six of Vardy’s goals were scored in precisely this manner.
The club record signing of Islam Slimani (below) has at least added the physicality and aerial threat missing from the Champions’ forward ranks but, with Vardy’s rapid acceleration slowing after just two goals in seven games at the start of the season, there’s a nagging feeling that Leicester could do with a little diversity.
Especially in the Champions League, where defences are more sophisticated and pace alone is often insufficient. They won’t be playing Club Brugge every week.
Therefore, Leicester could be forgiven for wishing they hadn’t forced Andrej Kramaric to dine on scraps while the rest of the squad feasted on pizza and champagne.
It is easy to forget that the Croatian striker arrived amid huge expectation for the then drop-dodging Foxes, a club record £9.5 million enough to beat off reported interest from Juventus and Chelsea and secure the services of a striker who had scored at a remarkable rate in his homeland.
18 months and four goals later, however, and Kramaric was forgotten, eclipsed by Vardy’s remarkable rise and flogged on the cheap to Bundesliga strugglers Hoffenheim, as reported by the Daily Mail. He had his chances, yes, but sporadic appearances here and there are not enough to allow an adaptation from a lower-ranked league in Eastern Europe to the most competitive competition on the continent.
Even an impressive loan spell in the final six months of last season, in which Kramaric’s five goals and two assists inspired the Sinsheim side to an unlikely survival, failed to convince Ranieri that he warranted a second chance at a club that had made its success by handing lifelines to drowning careers.
However, with Leicester finding goals harder to come by this season, they may find themselves glancing enviously across the channel at the versatile front man with the capacity to score and create in equal measure. Kramaric may have only netted twice this season, but his four assists places him among the most prolific creators in a league containing Franck Ribery, Julian Draxler and Gonzalo Castro.
Furthermore, Kramaric’s positional intelligence allows him to drop deep and feed passes in behind opposition defences, marking him out as the perfect foil for Vardy or the jet-heeled Ahmed Musa.
It is not often Leicester’s recruitment that lets them down but, on this occasion, they are the ones who let a promising talent slip through their grasp.
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