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James Maddison decided the game against Chelsea
Photo:
Tim Keeton / dpa
Scene of the game:
Referee Craig Pawson pointed to the point.
Johnny Evans, Leicester's defense chief, had hit Chelsea attacker Christian Pulisic on the foot, everyone agreed.
Only: where did he do that?
According to video evidence, the alleged eleven was sixteen and a half meters, apparently there had been contact just before the white line.
Mason Mount shot the free kick into the clouds - the chance for the Blues to equalize shortly before the break was a thing of the past.
The result:
Leicester City beat Chelsea FC 2-0 (0-0), giving Brendan Rogers' team four wins and two draws from the last six league games.
At least for one night, the Foxes can make themselves comfortable at the top of the table, Chelsea are in eighth place with nine points of respect.
Corona arithmetic:
If your head is already buzzing during pandemic times due to incidences and reproduction numbers, you should avoid looking at the Premier League table.
There Leicester City leads with 38 points after 19 games, Manchester United (37 points, 18 games) and Manchester City (35 points, 17 games) follow behind.
So both can overtake if possible if they win their pending games.
In theory, even Aston Villa could move up to the top spot: The Birmingham club is only in eleventh place with 26 points, but after several corona-related postponements, they have played four (!) Games fewer than Leicester.
The first half:
A clever corner kick variant set the dynamics of the game early: After a one-two with James Maddison, Marc Albrighton played the ball sharply inside.
There Harvey Barnes struck an air hole, but falsified the ball to Wilfred Ndidi, who hit the lead from a good 16 meters (6th minute).
It wasn't a coincidence: "You sometimes switch off with standards," said Maddison after the game about the opponent.
Chelsea rarely finished after that, and when they did, it was from too tight an angle to be really dangerous.
Shortly after Mount's missed free-kick chance, Maddison then made it 2-0 (41st).
Edge instead of Kanté:
Ndidi could not compete with his predecessor: N'Golo Kanté, Leicester's clearing talisman in the 2015/2016 championship season, was missing from Chelsea with a thigh injury.
But maybe the cross comparison to the French world champion is also chosen unfortunate.
After all, both players are top-class defensive midfielders, while Kanté is characterized by his action radius and his liveliness, the 15 centimeter taller Ndidi is more of a prudent haven of calm that keeps Leicester's creative players back.
Would that have been honored again without his goal?
Probably not.
Would he still have earned it?
Certainly.
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Wilfred Ndidi (left) is one of the top performers in Leicester
Photo: MICHAEL REGAN / AFP
The second half:
With the lead in the back, Leicester was allowed to try their beloved counter-football.
So the home side remained the more dangerous team despite clear ball possession disadvantages.
Albrighton's goal from the turn fell victim to the offside whistle from Referee Pawson (55.), Youri Tielemans' low shot was parried by Edouard Mendy with a defensive foot (57.).
What about Chelsea?
Spooned one corner after the other into the opponent's penalty area in the rain at Leicester.
The blues couldn't be accused of being inventive.
Sacked in the morning?
Frank Lampard is a club icon for Chelsea FC.
Blues fans won't forget his three Premier League titles and winning the Champions League in 2012.
But they would like to wipe the time of the coach Lampard out of their heads.
In any case, the malevolent path is breaking through the social networks, which is currently not allowed into the stadium due to the pandemic.
The tenor: It could have been Lampard's last game.
Maurizio Sarri, Guus Hiddink and José Mourinho played their last league games as Chelsea coach without a win against Leicester - Lampard could become the fourth of the last five coaches at Stamford Bridge to take this path.
The three question marks:
And then there were the three German national players in the service of the Londoners.
Antonio Rüdiger played a rather inconspicuous game, slightly misjudging himself before the 0: 2.
Kai Havertz was allowed to play again from the start after a five-game break, tried a lot, but achieved little.
At the break, his pass rate was 65 percent, an indication of a high willingness to take risks - with low returns.
And Timo Werner?
He almost ended his goal doldrums, but headed Hakim Ziyech's free-kick cross just offside into the goal.
Icon: The mirror