NICE, France — Jean-Pierre Rivère accepts the compliment, but rejects the comparison. Rivère, the president of OGC Nice, can see why his team, this season, has been cast as France’s equivalent to Leicester City. He knows their stories follow the same arc: a provincial David defying overwhelming financial obstacles to outwit Goliath.

He appreciates that the parallel is intended as praise, a convenient, flattering shorthand to explain the scale of Nice’s achievement in competing with Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain at the summit of France’s Ligue 1 over the last six months, maintaining a title challenge despite a budget that is a small fraction of its two bigger, richer rivals’.

Sitting in an office at the back of Nice’s official club store, though, Rivère does not indulge the comparison for long. What Leicester did in winning the Premier League last season, he says, came from the realms of fantasy. It was an alignment of the stars, one that can no more be explained than it can be repeated. Nice, he is convinced, is different. If Leicester was a wonderful accident, Nice’s metamorphosis is entirely by design.