HARI SREENIVASAN: Now an underdog story for the ages.

The English soccer team Leicester City came into this season as overwhelming long shots, but now, after defying all the odds, exit as their country's overall football champions.

The anticipation built, and then players from Leicester City erupted in cheers, celebrating the team's first league title ever after 132 years.

The Foxes were a 5,000-to-1 shot, but they won when second-place Tottenham played to a tie in its game on Monday. With that, the party spilled over into the streets of Leicester.

MAN: I have been waiting for this for 40 years of supporting Leicester City. It's unbelievable. And we have done it.

MAN: I mean, the whole world knows who we are now. That's important. Maybe the Americans can learn to pronounce Leicester properly as well.

HARI SREENIVASAN: It's been an improbable run for a team that had barely avoided demotion from the English Premier League, the country's top circuit. Winning the title was an even longer shot than the U.S. hockey team's miracle win over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics.

Much of the team's success has been attributed to its journeyman manager Claudio Ranieri. But he said today the credit belongs to his players.

QUESTION: How have you done it, Claudio? What has been the secret to Leicester's success this season?

CLAUDIO RANIERI, Manager, Leicester City Football Club: I don't know. I don't know the secret. I think the players, their heart, their soul, how they played.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Leicester has two games left to play, but those are now a formality. The title also guarantees the team a spot in next year's All-European Champions League Tournament.

For more on this unlikely season and the people who made it happen, we are joined from London by Andi Thomas, who covers soccer for SB Nation, an all-sports Web site.

So, help us understand how big a moment this is for this city, this town.

ANDI THOMAS, SB Nation: It's an absolutely massive moment for Leicester the town and for Leicester the football club.

It is something that absolutely nobody involved with the club or outside the club would have expected when the season kicked off. They'd have been hoping for, at best, a solid mid-table finish to avoid a relegation struggle, like last season.

So, yes, this will have been as surprising as it will have been kind of moving.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And did the momentum build up throughout the rest of the U.K. as this potential grew closer?

ANDI THOMAS: I think so. I think there's a lot to like about Leicester as a — from a neutral perspective.

There's the unlikeliness of the story. There's the fact that Claudio Ranieri is a very popular personality and manager in general. And some of the players, not all of them, but some of the players are quite, quite easy to warm to in some ways.

So, yes, I think there's been a lot of — a lot of outside interest, plus just the novelty of seeing someone outside the normal clubs in with a shot of winning the title is something to celebrate.

HARI SREENIVASAN: How crucial was the manager in all this? This is a person who has been at big league — or big clubs before.

ANDI THOMAS: Yes.

And he seems to have been exceptionally important for the club. He came in — he was very much a surprise appointment. There was a lot of skepticism about whether he — whether he was the right person to struggle against relegation, because that's what they're expecting to do.

And, instead, yes, he seems to have — because he inherited a squad that had just survived relegation last season, and he seemed to have carried on momentum from that improbable escape and just made everyone — united them as a team and as a unit.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And this isn't a club that has big superstars that are paid lavish sums of money. This is a pretty average group of guys.

ANDI THOMAS: Yes.

I mean, by the standards of anyone outside football, they're extremely well-paid professionals, but by the standards of the league they're competing in, they are very much from the kind of the bottom rung in terms of the wages.

The Premier League has never really been won by anybody outside kind of the top-wage-paying clubs. So, that — again, that's just another factor that makes is a surprise victory.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And, you know, your oddsmakers are not wrong that often. When somebody decides to place 5,000-to-1 odds against the team doing this, what happened? How did they get the math so wrong?

ANDI THOMAS: Well, I mean, the 5,000-to-1 odds, that's longer odds than the Loch Ness Monster existing. That's longer odds than Elvis being found alive.

ANDI THOMAS: It was very much a novelty bet, kind of, if you want to throw 10 pounds away in a symbolic way, that's how you do it.

And the fact that — the fact that it became a live bet and a possibility is unprecedented.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Is there a class dimension to this? I mean, are these — is this a working-class town, I mean, from the folks we heard from, vs. some of the elite clubs and the fan base that they draw?

ANDI THOMAS: Certainly, I think it's fair to say that, in the big clubs in the Premier League, they market themselves very aggressively as global clubs.

Manchester United has sponsors from all around the world. Manchester City have tie-ins New York and Melbourne, where, in Leicester, it very much feels like a triumph of the club and the town, in a slightly old-fashioned way, kind of the way English football used to be, before it became stretched at the top by the money of the Premier League.

So, yes, there definitely is the element that this quite — it's quite refreshing, refreshingly old-fashioned aspect to it.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Finally, any of these players going to go on and transfer to other clubs now that their stock has improved?

ANDI THOMAS: You would expect big clubs to be chasing them, certainly.

I think Riyad Mahrez and N'Golo Kante will both — there will be big bids for them over the summer. Whether they go or not, I don't know. Leicester, the chance to go into the Champions League, this club is — the players are clearly quite keen on one another and work very well as a team.

So, whether they will — hopefully, they will — you know, they will give it at least one shot in the Champions League before they accept the big offers and move on.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Andi Thomas from SB Nation, thanks so much for joining us.

ANDI THOMAS: Thank you.