LONDON: England's fairytale champions Leicester City welcome Atletico Madrid to the King Power Stadium on Tuesday, seeking to overturn a 1-0 deficit in their Champions League quarter-final.
Here are five key dates from their rollercoaster season:
July 16: Exit Kante
While Leicester managed to hold onto both Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez, they could not keep the other star of last season's 5,000-1 title triumph. France midfielder N'Golo Kante left for Chelsea in July for a fee of £32 million ($40.1 million, 37.8 million euros) and is now poised to pick up a second successive Premier League winner's medal. With new recruit Nampalys Mendy perpetually injured and Daniel Amartey failing to convince, it was not until the January arrival of Wilfred Ndidi that Leicester found an adequate replacement.
August 13: Undone at Hull
The first signs that things were about to unravel spectacularly came on the opening day of the Premier League season when Leicester lost 2-1 at promoted Hull City. Hull were without a manager and relegation favourites, but goals from Adama Diomande and Robert Snodgrass earned them a shock win. Leicester only lost three games over their title- winning campaign. By mid-October this season they had already lost four and there was much worse to follow.
November 22: Champions League salvation
While Leicester slipped down the Premier League table, the club found solace in their first ever Champions League campaign. Falling back on the counter-attacking tactics that served them so well last season, they won their first three group-stage games against Club Brugge, Porto and Copenhagen. A 2-1 home victory in the return game against Brugge in late November, courtesy of goals from Shinji Okazaki and Mahrez, took them into the knockout phase with a game to spare.
February 23: Ranieri sacked
By the time February was drawing to a close, Leicester had sunk to within one point and one place of the relegation zone and faced the prospect of becoming the first English champions to be relegated since Manchester City in 1938. They returned from the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie against Sevilla with a creditable 2-1 deficit. But hours later, in a move that shocked world football, Claudio Ranieri was sacked as manager. Leicester's players were roundly criticised for having let Ranieri down, but the promotion of his former assistant manager Craig Shakespeare proved a masterstroke. Leicester have won six of the nine games they have played since.
March 14: Sevilla sunk
Leicester had been largely outplayed during their first-leg defeat against Sevilla, but in the return leg they produced a display that brought to mind the stirring exploits of last season's title run-in. Captain Wes Morgan levelled the tie on aggregate and put Leicester ahead on away goals before Marc Albrighton slammed in an outright winger to send the King Power into raptures. It left Leicester as the last English representatives in Europe's elite competition.