How many fans does Leicester City have in Malaysia (and sejak bila?)

If you were to ask Malaysians which football club they support, many would name a big English club like Arsenal or Manchester United. Some may even say Barcelona or Real Madrid if they’re more on the Spanish side.

Yet, in the past few months, one very weird sounding team has popped up and become a household name. Leicester City FC (pronounced Les-ter, but also known as The Foxes) has been the team on everyone’s lips to not just the English Premier League, but the footballing world recently.

Why? Because Leicester City is currently really close to becoming champions of the English Premier League for the first time ever in their history.

How close?

Well, at time of writing, Leicester City is currently 8 points ahead of their closest challengers, Tottenham Hotspur (who have a game in hand) with only 3 games left to play! And if you know football, you know that’s not a lot of matches, especially when Leicester City still needs to play Chelsea, Everton, and that other big club that everyone supports…… Manchester United!!

[Update: Tottenham drew their game in hand, so now Leicester City is currently 7 points ahead with 3 games left to play. Which means they are ONE WIN AWAY from winning the English Premier League, and it all comes down to their match with Manchester United this weekend!!!]

And now you can watch that KANCHEONG match live with Tiger FC!

OMG ugaiz, Leicester City is playing Manchester United in a potentially title-deciding match on the 1st of May! 

And our sponsor, Tiger FC (by Tiger Beer), is inviting all you football lovers to join them at Laundry Bar, Curve to watch the match with them!

But between the two teams, one would assume that the whole event would probably be dominated by Manchester United fans, because who da heck supports Leicester City in Malaysia anyway?

Well, you may be as surprised as we are to find out that there are actually Leicester City fans in Malaysia, and they even have their own Facebook fan page! Nearly 2,600 fans and counting sumore!!

OMG does that mean that a few thousand people have been supporting this unknown team for the past dunno how many years now??? Well why don’t you have a guess when the page actually started?

Cheh, the page only started when Leicester was already doing quite well

When we first found this page we scrolled down as far as we could go, but we didn’t have to go very far down la because this page only started on the 18th of December last year. And during that time, Leicester City was already doing pretty darn well la.

But this isn’t the only Leicester City-related Facebook page in Malaysia. We found at least 4 other Facebook pages dedicated to Malaysian Leicester City fans, and all of them were either created in 2015 or 2016! #eeyerr

And it seems it’s not just Malaysia that’s been experiencing this Leicester City boom.

Leicester City fan clubs have been popping up in other countries as well!

Here are some of the countries that all also have some sort of Leicester City fan page on Facebook.

• Vietnam
• Indonesia
• Australia
• Thailand
• Cambodia

All of these were either started in 2015 or 2016, except for Thailand’s which started in 2010 and has over 500k likes! (We’re quite sure the fact that Leicester City is owned by a Thai business man has something to do with it though. Heck they even have Thai Buddhist monks praying for their success!!)

But aside from the Thai fans, many of us football fans would probably be quick to call fans from other countries ‘lalang’ or ‘gloryhunters’ or ‘plastic’ (the comments on the Malaysian page definitely do so). But what if supporting a team like Leicester City isn’t such a bad thing after all?

Can you really blame anyone for supporting an underdog like this?

“No matter what happens to end this season, I think our story is important for all football fans around the world.

It gives hope to all the young players out there who have been told they are not good enough.” – Leicester City manager, Claudio Ranieri, as quoted by Mirror

Everyone loves an underdog. Like who can forget that final fight in The Karate Kid when the dude knocks out the big, bad bully with a crane kick? Or Rocky when he just wouldn’t go down no matter how many punches he took to the face?

Psychological studies have been done as to why people root for the underdog. Articles like this and this discuss it, but generally they say it boils down to reasons such as:

• People believe the underdog works harder, and we like it when people try as hard as they can.
• People like to see a team beat the odds that are stacked up against them.

In Leicester City’s case, just over a year ago, they were rock bottom of the BPL, and save for some incredible games in the closing stages of the season, they would definitely have been relegated. 

In fact, the odds of them winning the league at the start of the season were so low that it was more likely for Hugh Hefner (of Playboy) to come out and say that he’s actually a virgin than for Leicester City to be where they are today!

And looking back at all the underdog movies that we’ve seen in the past, does Leicester City’s journey to win one of the most coveted prizes in European football have all the makings of an underdog movie? Let’s have a look:

• A loveable cast of characters? Check.
• A rags to riches story? Check.
• A fairy tale ending??

Well, why not come over to Tiger FC’s event on the 1st of May and find out?  😉