LEICESTER FAN VIEW: It was fitting that Khun Top holding the FA Cup was the iconic image at Wembley

It was fitting, in this of all seasons, that the defining image from Wembley was of a son clutching the FA Cup to his chest, his eyes closed, as he took a moment to remove himself from the pandemonium that surrounded him and filled that empty silver trophy with all the contents of his heart.

That son was Leicester City chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha. Above him, a banner of his late father Vichai stretched across the Wembley stands. Beside Vichai’s smiling face, his words: ‘Our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them’.

It is 30 months since Vichai was one of five people to lose their life in the tragic helicopter crash at the King Power Stadium. Aiyawatt, known as Khun Top, has taken the mantle and built on his father’s legacy.

Leicester chairman Khun Top holding the FA Cup was the iconic image from last week’s final

The Foxes won the FA Cup at Wembley with Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha looking over them

At the final whistle, Khun Top clasped his hands together and looked up to the sky.

Under normal circumstances it might seem strange for the lens to focus on a club’s owner. After all, it was Youri Tielemans who scored the winning goal with a strike so pure it’s already a Wembley classic. It was Kasper Schmeichel, who produced two world-class saves late on to keep the FA Cup. And it was Jamie Vardy who completed his journey of playing in every stage of the competition from the preliminary round.

They have become heroes, immortal in the folklore of Leicester City, a club whose history has been shaped by the elusion of the FA Cup from their grasp. Four finals, four defeats. Heartbreaks passed down through generations, from grandparents to sons and daughters, who will now share stories of the day they won it.

Leicester have managed it because their owners, in father and now son, gave them the courage — as well as the backing — to pursue their dreams. They achieved them five years ago when they won the Premier League. They did it again on Saturday at Wembley.

It’s from that vision that the rest follows.

Youri Tielemans (second right) scored the cup winner but all of Leicester’s players are heroes

This matters, now more than ever, because football is still crawling out of the shadow of the Super League. We are in a time when those who run the biggest clubs in the country have shown how little they care about what they own, only what it puts back into their pocket, and how little regard they have for the fans and communities at those clubs’ heart.

Leicester is the antithesis of that. The owners like to make money, of course they do. You don’t become billionaires if you don’t. But they also care and have done since they bought the club in 2010. They care about the club and its players. They care about the fans, the city to which they belong, and its culture.

The team has not long moved into a £100m training ground. Fans get free drinks and scarves. Before his death, Vichai also made a £2m donation to the city’s children’s hospital.

The late Leicester owner Vichai, who died in October 2018, was deemed a generous owner

Leicester managed to beat Chelsea in the FA Cup final 1-0 with supporters in attendance

All of this breeds togetherness, on and off the field. This is why Leicester players had a picture of Vichai on the inside of their shirts. This is why Schmeichel dragged Khun Top into the heart of the celebrations on the Wembley turf and the players danced around him as he lifted the cup to the skies. How fitting, too, that Leicester were able to do it in front of their fans.

He did so on the same day Tottenham supporters gathered outside their own stadium to protest their ownership. After the match, Arsenal legend Ian Wright, a BBC pundit at Wembley, admitted that ‘the jealousy I feel, knowing that an owner can be like that, honestly, it breaks my heart’.

Leicester continue to embarrass the elite, who only hate them even more for it. 

They are now the fifth team, after Manchester United, Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea to have won the Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup this century. Arsenal and Spurs haven’t.

Other clubs have become jealous of the work of the Srivaddhanaprabha family at Leicester 

In the last five years only Barcelona, Chelsea, Man City and Juventus of the Super League members have won the league and main domestic cup. Leicester have too. They are never on the guest list.

Leicester still have work to do to secure Champions League football but have shown what is possible if you have an owner who runs the club well, have a top-class coach like Brendan Rodgers and have a recruitment team that can scout and sign players like Tielemans, Wilfred Ndidi and Timothy Castagne for less than the price of selling Harry Maguire.

The next step for Leicester is to convince their star players that the grass is not greener in the bigger garden. This will only help their cause. That they won the FA Cup by beating a Chelsea team that included former team-mates N’Golo Kante and Ben Chilwell sends a message.

Leicester’s next challenge is to make sure their star players can be kept from bigger clubs

If you want to win silverware, you can do that at Leicester. If you want to play Champions League, you might be able to do that at Leicester too. We’ll find that out this week.

When Rodgers was appointed by Leicester, one of the targets given to him was to win the FA Cup. The players wanted to win it to honour their former chairman. So did his son.

So, as he hugged the trophy close to his chest, there was no more perfect place for him to do it: with fans singing, players cheering and his father smiling down.