Kelechi Iheanacho's T-shirt is right despite seven years of Leicester City extremes
The writing was on the wall before it was on Kelechi Iheanacho’s t-shirt.
Leicester City lifted the Championship trophy on Saturday to kickstart a weekend of celebrations, but while all of the squad were decked out in blue, Iheanacho had a white tee over his match jersey. The message on the front read: “We’ve got history. When I’m gone, you gon’ miss me.”
It looks to be a lyric from Nigerian artists Cheque and Fireboy DML, and you don’t know need to read too deeply into it to connect it to Iheanacho’s future at City. There has been no confirmation that he is leaving at the end of his contract next month, but at this stage, it would be a surprise if he were still at the club come the new campaign.
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Whether City are choosing not to offer him a new deal, or Iheanacho has signalled to the club he doesn’t intend to sign one, the result is the same: an end to the striker’s seven years at the King Power Stadium. And it’s looked like it might be heading that way for some time.
While sharing striker duties with Jamie Vardy for the first few months of the campaign, an injury and a month-long stint at the Africa Cup of Nations fell back to back in the early winter. In that time, Patson Daka made an impression on Enzo Maresca and Vardy started to play twice in a row more regularly.
In fact, in 2024, Iheanacho has not started a single City match, with his last appearance in the 11 coming in the 2-1 win over West Brom in early December. Since the turn of the year, he has made just five substitute appearances.
So whether City are letting Iheanacho go, or the 27-year-old is choosing not to extend his stay, it’s understandable. Iheanacho has not been prominent in Maresca’s plans for some time and an exit feels quite sensible for both parties.
If that is a goodbye, then how truthful is Iheanacho’s t-shirt? Is he going to be missed? On the basis of this season, possibly not.
It felt like a coup last summer when he stayed with the club, given his record at Premier League level. Sixty-seven goals and assists at a rate of one every 117 minutes is not too far shy of the division’s world-class players. Surely, then, the Championship would be a doddle for him?
It didn’t turn out that way. As part of Maresca’s gameplan, the central striker has to be able to receive the ball to feet from Jannik Vestergaard or Harry Winks and connect play with the attacking midfielders and wingers who may run beyond him. That seemed perfect for Iheanacho’s style, with the Nigerian having previously shown off his hold-up play, and his vision and creativity in fashioning chances for others.
But there were issues. While Iheanacho was the best of the City strikers at trapping the ball and laying off to team-mates, he came the deepest to do it. That meant he could not then support the attack he had helped set up, leaving City short of a focal point in the box.
The likes of Vardy and Daka, while not as involved in the build-up, had the pace to rejoin the attack in the moments when they did drop deep. It didn’t feel like Iheanacho could do that, and so his attacking threat decreased.
It didn’t help either that he does have a tendency to saunter around the pitch, only adding fuel to the fire that his heart wasn't in it this term. His half-hour as a substitute at Ipswich on Boxing Day didn’t help that reputation. Also, it meant he was the least effective at pressing from the front, another factor in Maresca turning to other strikers more often in the second half of the campaign.
He is a player who can blow hot and cold, and to extremes. Across his City career, there have been games where his ball control is perplexingly poor and attacks constantly break down with him. There have also been games where he’s been incredible, a goal threat and a elite-level creator mixed into one. It’s for those games that Iheanacho, if he leaves, should be remembered fondly.
It was never going to be easy for him. He arrived for a big fee of £25m and was in competition with the greatest player in the club’s history. When he stepped in for Vardy, whether in cup games or when the number nine needed a rest, comparisons were inevitably made. Iheanacho rarely lived up to Vardy.
His confidence decreased and he went on a 12-month goal drought. There were moments in that run when he was booed onto the pitch by his own fans. That’s not going to help a down-on-his-luck striker.
The last-minute VAR winner over Everton when he was mobbed by his team-mates turned things around for a year. But they went sour again in December 2020, when he failed to convert a penalty against Crystal Palace and let the miss hang over him.
Then came February 2021, with James Maddison and Harvey Barnes injured, Brendan Rodgers had to try something new. The formation was changed and Iheanacho came in alongside Vardy. It led to one of the best runs of form any City player has ever had.
If not for his 16 goals and three assists in 19 matches, City would not have stayed in the race for the Champions League as long as they did, and they would not have won the FA Cup. Yes, it was Youri Tielemans’ stunner and Kasper Schmeichel’s heroics that beat Chelsea at Wembley, but across the fifth round, quarter-final, and semi-final, City scored five goals, with Iheanacho netting four of them and setting up the other.
He finishes with 61 goals, 21st in the club’s all-time standings and just one behind Andy King and Steve Walsh. He is the club’s all-time leading scorer in cup competitions.
And he had personality too, whether that was dedicating his hat-trick against Sheffield United to “all the mothers in the world” on Mother’s Day, having lost his own mum as a young teenager, or saying he had to score a last-minute FA Cup winner over Brighton because it was too cold to play extra-time. On the pitch and off the pitch, he had the capacity to bring joy to City fans.
So, ultimately, Iheanacho is right. He will be missed. And probably more so if he now goes on to produce heroics for another English club. Because at 27 years of age, and with his talent, there’s plenty more time for him to shine.