Former Netherlands and Ajax defender Ricardo van Rhijn admits he had to ‘look up’ Leicester City when the Premier League outfit tried to sign him a few years ago.
It’s fair to say Van Rhijn quickly found out all about the Foxes.
Leicester, after all, would become Premier League champions just 12 months after trying and failing to lure the then-Ajax full-back to the King Power Stadium during the summer of 2015. A time in which Nigel Pearson had lost his job to Claudio Ranieri, and N’Golo Kante and Rihad Mahrez were still relative unknowns outside of Leicestershire.
“Of course, they played the Premier League,” Van Rhijn tells ESPN. “But they were not that special at the time. With Leicester, I thought (I will) look it up. And I wasn’t interested (in joining). I was just not that keen on Leicester.
“Then, you see that they become champions a year later. That is really incredible, because they have remained steady for years afterwards.”
Ricardo van Rhijn could have joined Leicester City
Well, until now, of course.
FA Cup and Community Shield winners under Brendan Rodgers back in 2020 and regulars in European competition for a time; Leicester have gone from dreaming of the Champions League to fearing the Championship. Saturday’s dismal 1-0 home defeat by AFC Bournemouth – Philip Billing profiting from a rare James Maddison blunder – leaves the fumbling Foxes 19th and staring down the barrel of a hitherto unimaginable return to the EFL.
Leicester hired Dean Smith on a short-term deal on Monday after sacking Rodgers.
“Leicester are in a dreadful position and they were put there by Brendan Rodgers. They have been in decline for a significant period of time. I don’t think he was particularly engaged in it,” Simon Jordan tells talkSPORT.
“There is a dearth of managerial talent around at the moment,” Jordan adds. “This is a terrible time of year to hire managers. Very rarely do you see this amount of managers go at this time. They’ve put themselves in a very difficult position.”
Van Rhijn, meanwhile, has been without a club since leaving German second-tier outfit Karlsruher SC back in June 2022. A three-time Eredivisie champion, he fell off the map after eventually departing the Johan Cryuff Arena for Club Brugge.
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