LEICESTER, England — By Sunday morning, half a dozen bouquets of flowers had been placed against a wall outside King Power Stadium. Leaning next to them was a framed portrait of Ganesha, the god of beginnings, the remover of obstacles. A handful of Leicester City fans stood a few yards from the makeshift shrine, their heads bowed.

They could not quite put into words what had drawn them there. At that stage, they were not certain if they were there to pray and to hope, or simply to mourn. They came in grief, in its cruelest form: grief that offers still a glimmer of a reprieve.

It was not until late Sunday night that Leicester City confirmed what they had all feared: that Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the Thai billionaire who had bought a stuttering team and transformed it into the most remarkable champion in English soccer history, had been among the five people killed in a helicopter crash outside the club’s stadium on Saturday night.

“It is with the deepest regret and a collective broken heart that we confirm our chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, was among those to have tragically lost their lives on Saturday evening,” the club said in a statement. “The world has lost a great man. A man of kindness, of generosity, and a man whose life was defined by the love he devoted to his family and those he so successfully led. Leicester City was a family under his leadership.”