Maybe there is another chapter left in the Leicester City fairytale after all. On a balmy evening in Seville, where Leicester welcomed the opportunity to dance to a different tune, the English champions rediscovered some of that courageous spirit from last season and also rode their luck.

The Champions League anthem provided the soundtrack to a night that had threatened to turn into an exercise in damage limitation for Leicester yet somehow ended with the 3,000 or so travelling fans singing loudly and proudly in a stadium that had long since emptied. Rarely has losing a game felt so good and a scoreline made so little sense.

Comprehensively outplayed for so much of the match and indebted to the outstanding Kasper Schmeichel for some superb goalkeeping, Leicester somehow escaped with a 2-1 defeat and a precious away goal that totally changed the complexion of this contest and the mood among those bouncing up and down in blue-and-white shirts high up in one corner of the vertiginous stands in this enthralling stadium.

For a brief moment it seemed like we were travelling back in time as Jamie Vardy and Danny Drinkwater, who had an almost telepathic understanding last season, combined to score the precious away goal that suggests there may be some life left in this Leicester team yet.

It was Vardy’s first in the Champions League at the sixth attempt, only the second game he has scored in for Leicester since September and with that in mind, it is tempting to wonder what the goal will do for the striker’s confidence.

Afterwards Ranieri talked about a possible “turning point” for everyone, yet that sort of talk has been heard before, so much so that Leicester have been going round in circles this season. Only time will tell whether the way that his players clawed their way back into this game will have an impact on their wretched form in the Premier League, starting with back-to-back home matches against Liverpool and Hull City on Monday and Saturday week.

There is no escaping the fact that Leicester were desperately poor for long periods, in particular the opening 45 minutes, when Ranieri suggested that his players were afraid to get on the ball, and the bottom line is that this was a seventh defeat in nine matches. Yet despite all of that the mood after the final whistle was positive and upbeat and supporters could be forgiven for daring to dream that Seville may not be the last stop on their European tour.

Earlier in the day they had descended on the warmest city in western Europe en masse. The temperature gauge outside one of the shops on the cobbled streets showed 25C and as fans walked around wearing sunglasses and shorts, enjoying a beer under blue skies while flamenco dancers strutted their stuff, it was easy to forget that it was February.

Leicester’s domestic trials and tribulations seemed a long way from anyone’s mind, which was part of the attraction of this trip for the players as well as the supporters, given the opportunity it presented to escape a winter of discontent and leave behind all that depressing talk about becoming the first English champions to be relegated since Manchester City in 1938.

They had travelled in hope rather than expectation, and it was impossible not to fear the worst for Leicester as Sevilla, playing with pace, precision and adventure, tore into them in the opening 45 minutes. Leicester’s calamitous defending did not exactly help their cause and there were times, in particular in the lead-up to the first-half penalty and with Sevilla’s second goal, when Wes Morgan and Robert Huth were tied in knots.

Schmeichel, in truth, was merely delaying the inevitable when he saved Joaquín Correa’s early penalty, with the visitors conceding an awful goal little more than 10 minutes later that had the Leicester goalkeeper bellowing at his team-mates as he marched out of the area after picking the ball out of the back of his net.

Ahmed Musa, who did nothing to justify his surprise inclusion wide on the right, allowed his pocket to be picked far too easily deep inside the Leicester half and then Christian Fuchs, in a moment that seemed symptomatic of his troubled season, was caught ball-watching as Pablo Sarabia ghosted in behind the full-back to direct a superb header into the far corner of the net.

Sevilla, a city famous for its bullfighting and in which Ranieri said that he would play the role of the matador, sensed blood at that point and when Correa, beautifully set up by Stevan Jovetic, doubled their lead, Leicester’s Champions League journey seemed over. Vardy, however, was not finished for the night and he scored the goal that leaves the door ajar to an improbable place in the last eight.