Leicester may not yet have taken on the great passing sides of Europe, but they have changed the way people in England think about football.

There has always been a definitive British style of playing football. Physical, high tempo, getting the ball forward quickly to ensure the defence can’t organise. But recently that has been changing, and not for the better.

The last time I watched Watford in the Premier League in 2007, there were four outstanding teams, Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. These teams would put you under relentless pressure for the full game, to the point that even if you were drawing 0-0 in the 93rd minute, you fully expected to lose. Most of the other teams were solid at the back, efficient, high-tempo and certainly good enough to polish off the majority of newly promoted sides.

This season is the first time I have seen Watford in the top tier since then, and I have been shocked by the drop in the standard of football in the Premier League. My team, under Quique Flores, are extremely well organised and a lot better than just about any Watford team in my lifetime. But the opposition’s lack of ideas in breaking down our defence have nonetheless astounded me.

Teams in the Premier League today, seem to play most of their games with a ridiculously low intensity. Their slow passing is akin to spending ninety minutes dipping their toes in the water to see if it is the right temperature. And if it isn’t, then they won’t jump in and attempt to score a goal.

These teams seemed so worried about what the tabloids might write about them if they dared to pick up the pace and lose possession that they forgot one key thing about the tiki-taka style they one day hoped to emulate.

It was devised simultaneously by Spain and Barcelona to play to their strengths, not to ours. If the Spanish player was technically and physically similar to the English player, tiki-taka would have never existed because Spain would have been able to compete in a physical battle and not resort to a gameplan revolving around possession.

Not only that, the Barcelona style of tiki-taka is, in its own way, all action, with a determination to win the ball back quickly and look for the killer pass. When you see English players with neither the required confidence or ability to play that style making an attempt at it, what you get is slow, insipid play, devoid of ideas.

Where the Spanish have used a possession style to play to their strengths, we have implemented it to our detriment.

That is until Leicester came along.

Manager Claudio Ranieri’s CV might not have looked great by the standards of pretty much any Premier League manager, but he did have one thing which nobody else had banked on – common sense.

Leicester had narrowly stayed up the previous season and most of their players were in just their second year of Premier League football. They had nothing like the technical ability to unlock defences with a slow possession game.

The Leicester team that won the league this season don’t play too differently to the upper mid-table teams of 2007. The big clubs like Man United, Chelsea and Arsenal used to have an answer to that, but the tiki-taka revolution means they have forgotten how to play against teams who don’t give them a break.

Leicester have no need for extensive possession, they are quick and direct and play with one fundamental principle that should be the norm for every team. When you have the ball, you try to score a goal.

In the latter part of the season, the Foxes were faced with a new challenge. As teams realised what a good counter-attacking side they were, they dropped deep. With Leicester suddenly having the onus on them to take the initiative, there was one huge trap they could have fallen into.

They could have become the slow possession team, trying to pick a lock that just wouldn’t budge. How did they get around that? It’s not rocket science. They focused relentlessly on another aspect of the game the British used to be so good at, the set piece.

Roberth Huth got the winner with an excellent header from a corner in what turned out to be the title decider at Spurs in January. In April, captain and centre-back Wes Morgan scored his first goal in a year with a header from a set piece against Southampton, then repeated the trick at Old Trafford this weekend.

Does this mean Leicester can achieve what Atletico have, and that their style can come up trumps against Barcelona’s in the Champions League next season? Well they don’t have to, at least not at the moment. They have nothing to prove.

Barcelona have better players, playing a style that works for them, and it took a long time for even Diego Simeone to create a team which could match them.

But hopefully, Leicester have put an end to what threatened to be a long era of British teams turning up to games meekly surrendering by playing a style which does not suit them.

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