“Today Leicester City will receive the premier league trophy - the most ridiculous, magical, wonderful thing I’ve ever tweeted about football,” Gary Lineker said on 7 May. I live near Leicester and count myself among the many thousands who, while not lifelong Leicester City fans like Lineker, have enjoyed the team’s run of success and have willed them over the finishing line with an uncharacteristic devotion to the live score commentary on an iPhone during mealtimes.

I was in the city on the day before the Premier League trophy was presented - there was bunting above the streets, the players’ portraits attached to lampposts and posters of support in almost every shop window. My favourite of very many slogans was: “Hare Krishna. #BackingTheBlues”. It was a wonderful example of the multicultural nature of Leicester, a city in which the majority of people are from non-white ethnic groups.

Motivational boost

The team’s win brought back memories of when I lived and worked in Sunderland in 1973 - the year that its nationally unfancied but passionately supported football team won the FA Cup. The increased self-respect in the town transferred on to the pupils, who were better motivated to work hard in school during the Cup run than they were at other times, when the closures of shipyards and coalmines were the factors dominating their future prospects. Perhaps Leicester’s school exam results will be better this year.

Leicester is a great place to live and work - and its football team are not the only local sporting successes. Leicester-born Mark Selby won his second world championship title in snooker just 10 minutes after the football team that he has always supported won the league title. The Leicester Tigers have been national rugby champions 13 times and European champions twice. The county cricket team has won the championship three times.

I have always been fascinated by the parallels between sporting success and successful schools, and between leadership in sport and in schools. I recall the calm authority and intellectual approach of England cricket captain Mike Brearley, whom school leaders would do well to emulate. And there were undoubtedly lessons to be learned from Sir Dave Brailsford’s “marginal gains”, which, added together, contributed so much to British cycling success.

Lessons from Leicester

So what lessons are there to be learned from Claudio Ranieri, who has led Leicester City to this unlikely triumph?

First, success doesn’t some easily. In a 30-year management career, Ranieri’s teams have won no major titles. His short tenure with the Greek national team was a spectacular and very public failure.

Second, unlike the star-studded teams that habitually top the table, where overpaid and over-hyped footballers have so much even without winning and often seem to be playing only for themselves, Leicester played as a team, with team spirit encouraged by Ranieri’s group outing for pizza and teamwork evident on the pitch from the start to the end of each match.

Third, Ranieri got the big decisions right, including such as the change in the format in which the team plays.

Fourth, Ranieri was supported by a strong senior leadership team - assistant manager, head of fitness and conditioning, head of sports science, performance nutritionist and head physiotherapist.

Fifth, the team has used evidence-based policies to maximise the chance of success. This has enabled Leicester to be the team with the fewest injuries and thus the fewest players used, contributing to the high level of mutual understanding and teamwork.

There are plenty of lessons here for school leaders and for those in charge of England Education plc, from the secretary of state to leaders of large chains and local authorities.

Humility and humour

Finally, Ranieri seems to be a genuinely nice person, with a degree of humility that all great leaders possess. Indeed, he appears to have all four of my Hs of school leadership success - humanity, humility, hope and humour. (See 10 things learned on my leadership journey.)

Good luck to him and the team next season.

John Dunford is chair of Whole Education, a former secondary head, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and national pupil premium champion. He tweets as @johndunford

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