Leicester's fairytale inspired others!

Last season's Premier League saw one of the most incredible sporting achievements as 5000/1 underdogs Leicester City did the impossible and won the title. Widely regarded as relegation fighters before the season started, they went on to break record after record and won the first division league title for the first time in the club's history. Their success sent shockwaves around Europe as Leicester were guaranteed a place in the Champions League groups stage and a place amongst Europe's elite. It seems that clubs across the continent have been inspired and are pushing for their own fairytales this season.

In Germany, newly promoted RB Leipzig started the season with real ambition and quickly found themselves at the top of the table. After 24 games of the Bundesliga, Leipzig sit in second place with a comfortable six point gap between them and Dortmund in third. They are a huge ten points from top spot but to be the best of the rest behind 26 times league champions, Bayern Munich, is a huge achievement for a club that was only founded in 2009. Rising from lower league obscurity to the brink of a Champions League is a fairytale story in its own right but a league title triumph would be the ultimate achievement.

There is an interesting three way tug of war for the title in the French league as PSG try to defend their title against Monaco and more surprisingly, Nice. In recent year, OGC Nice have achieved a couple of fourth place finishes but their league positions have varied from top five, to mid table, to fighting the drop. This season however, they have spent the first few months at the top but in recent weeks they have dropped down to third. They are by no means done for the season as they are still only five points behind Monaco in first and two points behind PSG in second. If they go on to win the league, it will be their first major trophy since the Coupe de France in 1997 and it would be their first league title since 1959.

Sevilla have also started pushing for the Spanish title and although they are already considered to be one of the best in Spain, or the best of the rest outside of the top three of Barcelona, Real and Athletico Madrid, a league title would be an incredible achievement. Despite recent successes with a Copa del Rey win in 2010 and three consecutive UEFA Europa League wins between 2014 to 2016, they haven't actually won the Spanish title since the 1945 - 1946 season. This season it has been difficult for them to keep up with the top two but they are only five points behind first place and if the top two continue to drop points and perform inconsistently, Sevilla could take their chance and the title.

Elsewhere across Europe, Feyenoord sit top of the Eredivisie and are looking for their first league title in seventeen years and trying to break the Ajax, PSV dominance that has seen fifteen of the last seventeen seasons being won by one of the two teams. Another shock could come from the Turkish Süper Lig where Istanbul Basaksehir, a club that was only founded in 1990, sit second in the league, only two points behind leaders Besiktas. If they manage to win the title, it would be the first major trophy in the club's history and an amazing accomplishments to beat top traditional Turkish clubs like Besiktas, Fenerbahce and Galatasaray.

It does seem to be a new era for football across the continent with more smaller clubs fighting back against the dominance of the bigger and wealthier clubs. The first major shock in recent years has to be Montpellier winning their first ever league title in 2012 and now Leicester have done the same in England, it shouldn't take long before we have a few more surprise victories in other leagues.