Tuesday 9th December 2025 kp 19:00

Premier League International Cup Group B

LEICESTER CITY U21 2 (Carr 63 Otchere 73)

FC NORDSJAELLAND U21 2 (Seidu 57 Johannsson 90+4)

Att 81 at LCFC Training Ground, Seagrave

Entry £3 (must be booked in advance)

Teamsheet FREE

If I’d have written this piece the day after this game I’m pretty certain the title would have been “Envy”. Since my Oxford United were promoted back to the Championship I’ve been comparing everything we have to what our rivals have, usually unfavourably!

Of course Oxford and Leicester are coming at it from completely different angles, one from the despair of our Conference years, compared to the club that gloriously won the Premier League in 2016 complete with Gary Lineker presenting “Match of the Day” in his underpants. I remember visiting Leicester’s other training ground in Aylestone back in 2012 and being impressed by that. But it wasn’t enough for an upwardly mobile club playing in Europe and with a Premier League title under their collective belts. A golf course in Seagrave, to the north of the city was converted to a new training ground with the Foxes moving in during 2020.

The place takes you breath away. Set in 185 acres, there are 21 playing surfaces, including 14 full-size pitches, including the mini stadium that staged this game. This has a capacity of 499, one less than the threshold for a stadium needing a safety certificate and behind the goal the Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha Building is the primary hub for the site, named after the Foxes’s late Chairman killed in that dreadful helicopter crash in 2018.

Elsewhere there’s the King Power Centre with its dome, housing an air conditioned artificial pitch, media centre broadcast facilities and a hospitality space. It is an amazing place, and one that I started comparing to Bristol City’s High Performance Centre before quickly realising this is on a completely different level of ambition. The problem is of course, at what cost?

All you see at Seagrave works if the club is in the Premier League, outside of it it becomes well meaning largesse. The issue is that Leicester City are now struggling at the bottom end of the Championship carrying a six-point penalty for breaking Premier League Financial Fair Play rules. What started as a wonderful facilty is looking increasingly like a millstone round the neck of the club, just imagine the running costs of here, even if the place is a sponsored, and short of selling it, you wonder what they can do to mitigate the losses?

The game rather summed up the location. On one hand an European U21 club tournament is interesting, but on the other is it really needed? No matter, a game is a game, but speaking to people watching Leicester’s issue was since the finances began to bite, the better, young players had been drawn up to the first team. It wasn’t immediately obvious, unless you’d looked at the mini league table beforehand; I hadn’t. It was more of a case of the ultra-drilled pass-and-move patterns I’d seen before not quite being pulled off, or not quickly enough to worry the opposition. And yes, despite it all Leicester did lead right up until stoppage time, only to concede right at the death. And I think every single fan that’s followed a failing team understands that feeling, don’t they?