It was close to midnight on Sunday at the Grosvenor House hotel when Riyad Mahrez stood in a quiet corner of the lobby and recalled a conversation he had with his friend N’golo Kante in January while downstairs his Leicester City team-mates could be heard celebrating another three points in the Premier League.

Mahrez, 25, the newly crowned Professional Footballers’ Association players’ player of the year, said that it was around January that he and fellow nominee Kante began to talk about the possibility of winning the Premier League title. Then the two men, both born in France, were part of a team that even were taking the English top-flight by storm but neither of them could have imagined that by the end of April they would be five points away from the title.