Jamie Vardy: The non-League ‘pest’ who became a Premier League icon

It was a farewell picture that captured the story perfectly.

Jamie Vardy, the former factory worker from Sheffield, surrounded by the Premier League trophy, the FA Cup, the Community Shield, the Premier League Golden Boot, the Football Writers’ player of the year trophy, the Premier League player of the season award, the Championship trophy, Premier League player of the month and player of the match awards, a Guinness World Record certificate for becoming the first player to score in 11 consecutive Premier League matches, the Match of the Day goal of the season award, and multiple Leicester City player of the season trophies.

Not a bad haul for a man who had never played a minute of professional football when Leicester took the plunge and picked him up at the age of 25 from Fleetwood Town, who had just won promotion from the National League.

“Leicester have signed non-League striker Jamie Vardy for £1million. What has football come to? Jesus Christ!” was one of the takes on Twitter at the time.

Thirteen years later, Leicester posted a message on the same platform describing Vardy as “our greatest ever player” and confirming that it was the end of an era. Vardy, their talisman for so long, would be leaving in the summer.

There is already talk of a statue being built outside the King Power Stadium, and if the sculptor has anything about them, Vardy will be captured pointing to the Premier League badge on the sleeve of his shirt.

Actions always spoke louder than words with Vardy, who was never comfortable talking about his own success but relished reminding some of the supporters who goaded him that there was a Premier League title in Leicester’s trophy cabinet.

No matter what Vardy does next — he has no plans to retire from playing — he will always be synonymous with that extraordinary story in 2016 and with Leicester City Football Club, where he is closing in on 200 goals and 500 appearances. Vardy, quite simply, is a Leicester City legend.

Aged 38, he has left an indelible mark on the club, the city and, at the same time, the Premier League, where he sits 15th on the all-time list of leading goalscorers. His numbers — 143 goals and 47 assists across 338 Premier League appearances — are exceptional. All the more so when you stop and consider that he was 27 years old when he made his Premier League debut.

Three weeks after that cameo against Arsenal in August 2014, Vardy wreaked havoc against a Manchester United side that featured Robin van Persie, Radamel Falcao, Angel Di Maria and Wayne Rooney. Vardy, who scored one and assisted two in a wild 5-3 victory at the King Power Stadium, described it as “the game of my life”. As for the media, they lapped up his rags-to-riches story.

That United match was a sign of things to come, albeit not quite as quickly as Vardy and Leicester would have liked. Six months passed before Vardy scored again in the Premier League. But then he couldn’t stop. Four goals and four assists in nine games towards the end of the 2014-15 season helped Leicester pull clear of the bottom three, earned Vardy the first of 26 England caps, and laid the foundations for arguably the greatest football story in the modern era.

Managed by Claudio Ranieri, who had replaced Nigel Pearson in the summer, Leicester were considered relegation favourites at the start of the 2015-16 season. Their title odds were, famously, 5,000-1.

Vardy emerged as the central character in the fairytale that followed. He finished with 24 goals that season, broke Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record by scoring in 11 successive Premier League matches, and hosted the title-winning party at his home after spending the afternoon drinking cans of Stella Artois in between going under the needle at a tattoo parlour in the city.

That was classic Vardy. Nothing about him was conventional, as Leicester discovered during his first season at the club when a dead leg was taking far longer than it should have done to heal. When the physio, Dave Rennie, pulled him aside to ask what he was doing away from the club, Vardy explained that he had been working his way through a three-litre bottle of vodka mixed with Skittles.

Vardy was always happy to remind his detractors of his trophies (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

It took time for Vardy to adapt to being a professional footballer on and off the pitch and there were moments during that first season at Leicester when he questioned whether he was good enough to play in the Championship. At one point, he asked to go back to Fleetwood on loan — a request that was flatly turned down by Pearson and his staff, who had a lot more faith in Vardy at that time than Vardy had in himself.

Three years later, Vardy was a Premier League title winner, named in the England squad for the 2016 European Championship finals, and was wanted by Arsenal, who triggered his release clause.

Vardy at Arsenal under Arsene Wenger would have been fascinating. A fox-in-the-box to finish off all the intricate passing moves? Or a striker constantly making runs in behind for the ball that never comes?

Either way, Vardy decided to stay loyal to Leicester and signed a long-term contract that he never regretted.

The big question for some people at that time was whether Vardy would be a one-season wonder. Plenty doubted him, including the former England striker Michael Owen, who claimed that Vardy relied a lot on luck in front of goal and described him as someone who wasn’t a “natural finisher”.

Good fortune must have been smiling on Vardy for a long time. In the six seasons that followed Leicester’s title triumph, he scored 104 Premier League goals — and goals of every description, too, including a wonderful controlled volley with his left foot against West Brom in 2018 that won him the Match of the Day goal of the season award.

In his early days at Leicester, Vardy would often describe himself as a “pest”, but he became much more than a thorn in the side of centre-backs. His game evolved with and without the ball and earned him respect on the biggest stages.

“He would fit in at the vast majority of teams in the world,” Diego Godin told the Guardian before Atletico Madrid’s Champions League quarter-final against Leicester in 2017. “He works, sacrifices himself for the team, and on top of that, scores goals. Who wouldn’t want a striker who kills himself for you, then gives you attacking solutions?”

A couple of years ago, Erling Haaland revealed that he studied Vardy’s movement and described the Leicester striker as the “best in the world” at running in behind centre-backs when the No 10 has the ball. Vardy’s finishing in those scenarios was more often than not composed, too. In fact, his goalscoring record at the highest level (143 in 338 Premier League appearances) is remarkably similar to Owen’s (150 in 326 appearances).

Not that Vardy ever wanted to spend his time and energy talking about milestones or comparisons with others. He would always roll his eyes at that kind of stuff.

When he was on the verge of joining the “100 club”, Leicester put out videos showing each and every one of his 99 Premier League goals. The footage was released in three parts. Vardy — and it’s the only way to describe this, really — couldn’t be arsed with it.

“I’ll be honest, I tried clicking on it to take me back in time, and it said I had to sign up to some LCFC TV thing. I was like, ‘I’ve not got time for that’,” he told The Athletic in 2020.

That 100th Premier League goal arrived in the summer of 2020, in fewer games than it took Rooney, Didier Drogba and Romelu Lukaku, and in the same season that Vardy won the golden boot at the age of 33, by which point he had a cryotherapy chamber installed at his home to improve his recovery after matches (a dead leg cleared up a lot quicker).

Vardy with the Premier League Golden Boot in 2020 (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

But it was a landmark moment the following year that gave him far more satisfaction. When Leicester beat Chelsea 1-0 at Wembley to win the FA Cup for the first time in their history, the players dedicated the victory to Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the club’s late owner, who was killed, along with four others, when his helicopter crashed outside the King Power Stadium in October 2018.

Vardy was particularly close to Srivaddhanaprabha — he invited him to his wedding — and made a point of thanking him and his son Aiyawatt for bringing him to the club in his announcement yesterday, as well as acknowledging the poignancy of that FA Cup triumph. “That was for you, Vichai,” Vardy said.

For Vardy, this clearly isn’t the storybook ending that he had in mind. A second relegation in three seasons has hurt him — Vardy described the current campaign as a “s***show” at the weekend — and he could be forgiven for thinking that he should have moved on last summer on the back of leading the club to promotion.

Instead, he now has a handful of Premier League matches remaining at the club, including what promises to be an emotional occasion at the King Power Stadium on May 18, when Leicester host Ipswich in their final home game of the season and the supporters will have the opportunity to say goodbye to a No 9 unlike any other.

Vardy, however, will not be saying goodbye to football. Those close to him say he is as driven and motivated as ever and, as crazy it sounds at his age, is still talking about the need to prove people wrong.

(Top photo: Plumb Images/Getty Images)

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