Europe and Beyond: The Royal Blue visit the Rouge et Bleu

As the Portsmouth coastline disappeared behind us we wondered what we were sailing into. This was our boldest footballing pilgrimage yet; one that would involve a six-hour crossing to a country where we didn’t speak the language and it didn’t speak ours.

Still, as the old saying goes, football is a universal language and we were in search of a good conversation. Poetic bulls@£$% aside, we were two Leicester City fans making our first trip to Normandy to show our support for a club unlike our own, despite modest beginnings.

Stade Malherbe Caen was founded exactly 100 years ago in 1913 but was an amateur club until 1985. Named after Norman poet Francois de Malherbe, the club has bounced between France’s top two divisions in recent years. The club’s fiercely loyal support believes Malherbe to be a top-flight club and is endlessly restless when they aren’t there. Sound familiar?

My interest in the club began while studying for a degree in Journalism. Wanting to specialize in football like the rest of the world and his brothers, I decided I would attempt to gain a good knowledge of all major European leagues. I figured the easiest way to do this would be to pick a team and chart their progress. Interests in Schalke 04 and Chievo Verona fell by the wayside but it was Malherbe that stayed with me. Chosen purely because they wore the same colours as FC Barcelona, a club I have followed since I was seven (a story for another day), Malherbe had captured my attention.

Shalalalalala Wasyl!

Saturday saw us climb above Burnley and QPR with what was quite frankly a title-winning performance from what looks like – on current form and promise – the best team in England’s second tier. Without wishing to get too carried away, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to suggest that this is the best squad LE1 has seen since the MON era. Playing an exciting brand of attacking football, Nigel Pearson has developed City into a team that now look lethal in transition too – as evidenced by the first of Jamie Vardy’s well-deserved brace.

But we’re not just great to watch going forward. Our defence has been chopped and changed but whatever back-four big Nige has fielded, we have looked strong. Liam Moore has had a great season. Konchesky is arguably having his best spell in a City spell in a blue shirt. Wes is just, well, Wes. More recently we have seen a bit more of Ignasi Miquel and Marcin Wasilewski. And it was the man-mountain Pole who was indirectly responsible for some of the best entertainment on show on Saturday afternoon. No small ask given the shift our lads put in.

Lloyd Dyer had already put us in front – volleying home a Danny Drinkwater (seriously Roy, get him on the plane in June) cross when the West Stand was quite literally invaded by a coach load of beered-up Belgians from Royal Sporting Club Anderlecht.

Some of the group – laden with RSCA, Polska and ‘Crazy Belgians on tour’ flags – were not making their first trip to Filbert Way. A few had made the hop across the Channel to see the Bournemouth game earlier this season. The numbers had swollen since that day. Around 70 made the trip and with renditions of ‘We love you’, ‘Shall we sing a song for you?’, a few further anti-Millwall songs and of course a few cycles of their fairly sizeable Wasilewski specific songbook, they probably made C2 the loudest block in the stadium.