RIP Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha

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The LCFC Foxes Foundation has been renamed The Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha Foundation in honour of the Club’s Chairman, who tragically lost his life alongside four others, on Saturday 27 October.

Since its formation in 2011/12, the Foundation has raised almost £2M for local charities, helping fund a renovation of Leicester Royal Infirmary’s Children’s Outpatient Ward and life-saving equipment desperately needed by the Children’s Intensive Care Unit.

The LCFC Foxes Foundation aimed to use football as a force for good in the community. Under its new name, The Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha Foundation will continue to build on that life-changing work in a way that reflects the generosity, care and love of a man who made over £4M in personal donations to the city’s universities, hospitals and charities in recent years.

Among the dozens of local causes supported since it was first formed in 2011 are Leicester Hospitals Charity, LOROS and Rainbows Children’s Hospice, as well as the installation of life-saving defibrillators in key areas around Leicestershire.
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A number of items will be auctioned off to help raise money for the newly-named Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha Foundation, including Jamie Vardy’s Executive box, which seats ten people, for the Foxes’ home fixture against Burnley on Saturday (10 November). The package includes a four-course meal, drinks and a personal visit by the striker.

Other items up for auction will be the boots which Vardy wore at the Cardiff match, with ‘Khun Vichai’ embroidered on them, and a pair of Kasper Schmeichel’s gloves.

To bid on any one of the items listed above, please email [email protected]. You will need to include your full name, contact telephone number, the amount you’d like to bid and on which item.

We will keep this page up to date with the highest bids.

Successful bidders will be notified by 10am on Thursday.
 
pork pie fox said:
Despite his omission from the 25 man squad (which I have always disagreed with), the fact that Kingy still talks about "we" and "us" shows me what a proper club man he is. I'd go as far as to say that my favourite goal of our Premier League winning season, was his goal at home against Everton, on the day we received the trophy.
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:love:


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Brown Nose said:
United in grief for man who created a miracle

jonathan northcroft, football correspondent

“This is my only shirt from when we won the league,” she wrote. Neatly, in marker pen across a girls’ away jersey. Signed, “Love, Eloise (age 13).” Her only shirt, her memento of a miracle, the artefact she might have kept into old age. “Thank you for helping us achieve something as great as that. We are a family, and you will always be part of that family,” her message said.

Eloise’s jersey is a tiny clump of white in a multi-coloured pasture of love that is still growing outside the King Power in tribute to Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a week on from the Leicester owner’s death in a helicopter crash at the stadium.

It’s the personal nature of what people have given up and laid down that gets you. The drawings by children, the letters by grandads who have supported Leicester their whole lives. The treasured match programmes, match tickets; the goalkeeping gloves, the drum, the bottle of single malt. The family photographs. The photos of fans with Vichai.

Ali, a friend now in his 30s, went on Monday to lay his Leicester scarf, the one he’d worn to every match since he was a little boy. There’s a shirt saying “thanks for what you did for the grassroots” from Syston Town. Their ladies’ team cancelled training to visit and sign a book of condolences. “Although [Vichai] never did anything specifically for us, the LCFC story has meant more girls locally getting involved,” manager Paul Kirk explained.

I live in Leicester, arriving in the run-up to that ludicrous 2015-16 title win. The outpouring now seems almost greater than then. They talked about Vichai in my daughter’s Year Two assembly and the council’s psychology service are guiding schools on helping pupils with grief. The Red Cross and association of Leicester street pastors are outside the stadium if supporters need them.

Inside the club, people are raw. Players are availing themselves of an offer of counselling. 8am Wednesday, a colleague saw a man with his hood pulled low, lost in his thoughts, looking through the books of condolences outside the stadium. It was Kasper Schmeichel.

And it was Kasper’s dad, Peter, who explained Leicester to me right from the start. After their 2013-14 promotion he told me: understand that the club is special, and special because of two things. The bonds at the training ground, thanks to a culture established by Nigel Pearson. And the quality of the owners, said Peter. He had never known anything like those guys.

Speaking to Peter again this week, he was raw too. Kasper has been at Leicester seven years. “I’m a father. Kasper’s career is his gig. But from a distance I looked at how this guy [Vichai] was looking after my son, and that is better than anything,” Peter said. “I know the game. I know the people behind the game. I know how people are queuing up to grab money from anywhere, and don’t care what happens after they’re paid. Vichai was different. In football you meet nine b******* in 10 people. Vichai was the one in 10.”

Myriad stories of Vichai’s kindnesses are being told and retold across the city. Standing where the tributes end at the stadium’s northeast corner, you can see Leicester Royal Infirmary, where he made a £2m donation. But you can also see the humble buildings of an inner-city cricket club, beneficiary of one of his numerous unpublicised acts: Vichai apparently walked in one day with a cheque.

One shouldn’t be gooey, for Vichai also wanted something in that instance — for the club to be OK with stadium guests parking by its premises. His generosity was partly business strategy, rooted in ideas about karma (if you give, you get back) from his Buddhist faith. Peter never doubted Kasper would sign a new five-year contract in August, because of his loyalty to Vichai and Vichai’s son, Aiyawatt, nicknamed Top, “who has the same mentality as his father”.

Not all owners are welcome in dressing rooms but this one was. Players loved his twinkle and informality and the times he entertained them, like on a Thailand trip soon after his takeover in 2010 when in the theatre at the Pullman King Power Bangkok the squad was treated to an acrobat and sword-fighting show. Big Steve Howard volunteered to get on stage and join a sword battle.

Vichai meant something to Leicester outside of football and something to football outside of Leicester. It wasn’t the title miracle, it was how he treated fans. He spoke to them directly — you could approach him in his seat at the ground, he and Top were found walking around Copenhagen, Bruges and other destinations in Leicester’s Champions League adventure. “Thank you,” fans would say. “No,” they’d reply, “thank you.”

No wonder Vichai’s glimpse of humanity has struck a chord. The tributes at the stadium include shirts and scarves of dozens of clubs. For owners Vichai should be a model. Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish saw him as such. “There’s a fantastic culture and warmth at Leicester and that comes from the top,” Parish said. Now, the job of guiding Leicester befalls Top, who once scored a hat-trick in a Leicester staff game. A new £100m training ground and stadium revamp to incorporate 10,000 extra seats and a hotel are on the agenda. Before Saturday’s game with Burnley the vast tribute will have to be moved. The flowers will go to the stadium’s southeast corner, near the crash site, where a permanent memorial to Vichai is likely. The plan is to store the shirts and make them a feature or artwork at the redeveloped ground.

And a small, white, girl’s jersey will be among them. We were family. Signed with love by Eloise, aged 13.
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Okay so i’m In tears again.
 
I have felt more emotional about this than I have for many things. It is strange how football can be so deep in your heart.
 
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homer said:
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If anything, that looks even more startling/impressive than it did when they were spread out over the forecourt.
 
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I went down again this morning first thing. So wanted to stay and help but I had work. The efforts of all the volunteers was incredible, and what they have created is even more stunning. I feel very lucky to have been able to watch the commemoration grow and now be transformed. This is such an utterly stunning tribute to our Chairman, and one which has reduced me to tears on several occasions throughout the recent days since that tragic accident. Supporters from both our team and so many others from here and abroad have laid tributes that have stirred emotions in me that I don't even recognise. A mix of pride and grief, such that I have never known.
 
No way I will be able to get through that in the stadium without crying. When he says that he wants to keep the club forever...
 
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