Jamie Vardy hands Leicester Champions League lifeline against Sevilla

There is life in Leicester yet. Claudio Ranieri described this as the biggest night in their history, yet there will be another and there may even be more beyond that after Kasper Schmeichel saved a penalty and Jamie Vardy scored his first Champions League goal to allow them to leave Spain with vital signs intact. “We had a very big heart,” the manager said. Down but not out. Well-placed, in fact. Defeated but with a vital away goal.

Vardy scored it with 17 minutes to go. On the touchline Ranieri leapt, his glasses almost falling off. For much of the night he had peered through them, bewildered and powerless, watching his team being taken apart. But they resisted, or were allowed to, and then they rebelled. One moment changed everything. For so long it did not seem remotely likely, but then unlikely is what Leicester do.

Sevilla had been two goals up, through Pablo Sarabia and Joaquín Correa, and they had been in control too. Samir Nasri and Steven N’Zonzi had completed 193 passes – 36 more than the entire Leicester team – and the home side had racked up 22 shots. But with two hitting the frame of the goal and a first-half penalty saved, it was not enough. After a first half in which injury was an opportunity for urgent inquiry – so overrun had been the Premier League champions – Leicester found a second-half goal that gives them hope where there appeared to be none.

When Ahmed Musa and Sergio Escudero clashed heads five minutes before half-time Leicester’s players gathered by the touchline, where Schmeichel conducted the investigation: what’s going on? No one had an answer. The goalkeeper had kept them in the game until then. Ranieri appealed for calm, but it was one thing telling his players, he also needed to tell Jorge Sampaoli’s players. Sevilla were everywhere except, it seemed, where Leicester expected them to be.

N’Zonzi dropped between the central defenders, not to end moves but to start them. Nasri came deep to join him, and assist in bringing the ball out. Together they ran this game. Way ahead of N’Zonzi, the two full-backs pushed right up so that Sevilla appeared to have two wingers on each side, Mariano Ferreira and Escudero dashing outside Sarabia and Vitolo. Outside, then inside, then outside again. The movement was uncontainable.

The space between Leicester’s defence and midfield seemed to be full of men in white shirts, flying round like particles in a hadron collider. Though this looked chaotic, it was not. This is Sevilla’s way now, and in the middle N’Zonzi glided. When Leicester pressed, which they did rarely, Sevilla stepped beyond them into space; when they waited, it did not stop them coming. The first chance came in the third minute, the last in the 89th. By half-time Sevilla had taken 10 shots. Leicester had had just one long-range effort that worried no one. The surprise was that Sevilla had scored only once. Schmeichel had much to do with that, diving right to save Correa’s penalty after he had been brought down by Wes Morgan.

He saved from Escudero and Steven Jovetic too but could not stop the opening goal after 25 minutes. Nasri, Vitolo and Escudero combined, the latter’s deep cross headed in off a post by Sarabia. The Pizjuán, loud already, erupted. They would have to wait until the second half to do so again.

Leicester had been outplayed and passive, something they appeared determined to change in the second half, Musa shooting in the opening minute. Vardy, who had only 10 touches in the first half, chased. Momentarily, Ranieri’s side had a bit of the ball and Danny Drinkwater’s deflected shot went just wide. “Come on Leicester,” their supporters chanted, heard above the din for the first time. Sevilla’s fans whistled; they didn’t like their English visitors having the ball.

It didn’t last long. Vitolo, released into the area by Nasri, shot at Schmeichel from a tight angle. The ball beat the Leicester keeper but came off the base of his near post, across the goal and away.

N’Zonzi pirouetted through one wave of pressure and then Sevilla scored again. A long ball towards Jovetic was controlled on the chest, then his head, and as the ball bounced he turned smoothly and guided it with the outside of his foot into the path of Correa to thump high into the net. In his glass-fronted prison the suspended Sampaoli punched the air. Withdrawn immediately afterwards, Correa left to a standing ovation.

Vicente Iborra replaced him, the man who had admitted: “Leicester showed us that everything is possible”, and that included finding a way back into this tie. Demarai Gray, on for Musa, slipped an angled ball to Drinkwater and his delivery was perfect, bent low across the area, evading Sergio Rico. Vardy reached it to score. How different this looked now.

Sevilla knew that too and they searched for the third, which looked for a moment like it might open the door for Gray on the break. At the other end Schmeichel blocked Vitolo and Adil Rami’s header hit the bar. As the board went up, three minutes more, so did the chant “Leicester, Leicester”. At the full-time whistle they stood to applaud. Leicester are still here.