It said: “You were Man of the Match at every Leicester City game. Thank you for making our dream come true. RIP Sir.”
There was no name on this poignant note outside the King Power Stadium.
And yet they perfectly summed up the devotion Foxes fans felt towards the 60-year-old self-made billionaire from Thailand.
In an age when footballers are treated like Gods, Vichai’s contribution to Leicester was greater than any of the highly-paid superstars in the home dressing room.
Jamie Vardy’s record 11-game scoring streak, Riyad Mahrez’s outrageous skill and Kasper Schmeichel’s saves may have been crucial to the Foxes’ 5,000-1 title triumph in 2016.
Ex-boss Claudio Ranieri spiced it up by adding a few ingredients of his own and kept his team bubbling along nicely.
But the guy who dreamed up the unique recipe for success was a Thai tycoon with a rare and valuable gift for being able to combine a human touch with his Midas touch in business.
After their miraculous title success an unexpected problem emerged.
The players had negotiated their collective bonuses for the season, including rewards for staying up, winning the FA Cup or League Cup and various permutations for where they would end up in the league.
The previous season had seen Nigel Pearson perform an escape act Harry Houdini would have been proud of to stay in the top flight.
Which was probably why no one had factored in what the players’ bonus would be for actually winning the Premier League 12 months later.
Under strict FA rules those bonuses could not be tampered with.
Some owners might have rubbed their hands in glee at the prospect of having a cast-iron excuse for saving a small fortune — after all, it wasn’t his fault.
But that would not have sat well with the humble Thai businessman, who adored his players and the rest of his staff. So he ordered a fleet of £105,000 gleaming BMW i8s in Leicester blue.
And he had them parked side-by-side so when the players arrived they would all be met with the same surprise gift.
Similarly, in the coming months, stars like Vardy and Mahrez were rewarded with the club’s first £100,000-a-week contracts.
However, England’s World Cup hero Harry Maguire will ride down Filbert Way on a white unicorn before the club find a player worth more to Leicester than the owner who transformed the club.
He bought them for £39million in August 2010 — and turned them into a company valued by Forbes today at £371m.
With work about to get under way on a new £100m training complex — and plans to increase the capacity of the King Power from 32,000 to 40,000 — Srivaddhanaprabha’s legacy is guaranteed.
Vichai’s vision for his field of dreams began in 1997 when he took his son Aiyawatt to Wembley to watch the League Cup final between Martin O’Neill’s Leicester and Middlesbrough.
It was the Foxes’ first Wembley final appearance since 1969. Emile Heskey scrambled a late equaliser, the Foxes won the replay at Hillsborough and they were hooked.
A decade later, King Power became shirt sponsors of Leicester. And three years later, Vichai took 30 minutes to convince Milan Mandaric to sell him the club he had taken to his heart.
He wrote off the club’s £103m debt and his generosity of spirit was what endeared him to fans and to the wider Leicester public.
Some of his acts of kindness are only beginning to come out now.
We have all heard about the free breakfasts for travelling fans, the bottles of beer on his birthday and the cardboard clappers he provided at a cost of around £20,000 a game to raise the roof.
But it was the charitable acts he kept quiet which were the measure of the man.
The £2m to develop a children’s hospital at the Royal Infirmary, where he hosted a teddy bears’ children’s picnic — or £1m to the University of Leicester’s medical department.
Then there was the £1m gift to Leicester City Foxes Foundation in April.
He loved the tiny personal touches — like ensuring there was always a bottle of whisky at the remembrance garden next to the stadium for supporters to toast and honour loved ones.
This weekend another remarkable tale emerged.
Jose Ragoobeer, who lost his wife and two sons in the Leicester explosion on Hinckley Road this year, revealed how Vichai took a personal interest in his plight.
The Leicester owner not only insisted Jose should have free use of one of the club’s function suites for the wake, he also provided the food, paid for the drinks, music and every other comfort the grateful husband and father required.
I have covered Leicester as The Sun’s Midlands reporter for more than seven years now.
And, like my colleagues on the patch, we have never had the privilege of being granted an interview with Vichai, who preferred to let his actions speak louder than our words.
I realise now, like every member of his staff, like every citizen of Leicester, like the wider football family, the loss was definitely mine.
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