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Where to start with the wiry teenager turned Premier League icon who once worked 12-hour shifts in a carbon-fibre factory? Perhaps at the beginning of an extraordinary career, his release by Sheffield Wednesday and those days earning £30 a game at Stocksbridge Park Steels hounding defenders in the Northern Premier League. For six months an electronic ankle tag – after he was convicted of assault – meant midweek matches were off-menu and games often saw him being subbed after an hour so he could jump over fences and into his parents’ car to beat his 6pm curfew. By then, his work was usually done.
Word of mouth spread. He signed for Halifax for £15,000 in 2010, then Fleetwood a year later for 10 times that. Ten months on he joined Leicester in the Championship in a £1m deal, a non-league record. The story goes that he first appeared on Nigel Pearson’s radar while scoring 66 goals across 107 Stocksbridge appearances. A friend of the Leicester manager who ran a fish and chip shop in Sheffield mentioned his name, a throwaway comment about a prolific striker in the eighth tier. Soon scouts were flocking to Fleetwood and Leicester beat off competition from Blackpool, Peterborough and Southampton to sign a 25-year-old by the name of Jamie Vardy.
Steve Walsh, then an assistant manager and head of recruitment at Leicester, first scouted him when Fleetwood won an FA Cup tie at Yeovil in 2011. Vardy scored and Walsh made him his No 1 target. Leicester showed Vardy a montage of his best bits, and Pearson’s status as a Wednesday hero helped persuade him Leicester was the best destination. He scored a header on debut at Torquay but initially found things tough and, concerned the jump was too big, asked to return to Fleetwood on loan. “I think that’s the one and only time in his life where I would say he lost confidence,” Walsh recalls. “He was used to being the star of the show, scoring every week and people saying how good he was. All of a sudden there was a reality check. We had to point out that it takes time to adjust.”
On Sunday Vardy, who turns 39 in January, will make his 500th and final appearance for Leicester, he hopes with a 200th goal to boot. No wonder Netflix is releasing a documentary charting his journey from turning up at sloping pitches in a clapped-out Renault Clio to breaking records on the biggest stage, chiefly scoring in 11 successive Premier League matches to eclipse Ruud van Nistelrooy, now his manager at Leicester. “His story is almost a fairytale, but they don’t need a script – just tell the truth,” says Walsh. “He is a living legend.”
Vardy has won the Premier League, against all odds under Claudio Ranieri in 2016, the division’s Golden Boot, the FA Cup, played in the Champions League, for England at a World Cup and been nominated for the Ballon d’Or. He is joint 14th on the list of Premier League goalscorers, two shy of Teddy Sheringham. He even has a Guinness World Records certificate owing to that record-breaking goal against Manchester United en route to the title. “Not many managers would but Claudio mentioned it beforehand,” says the former Leicester winger Marc Albrighton. “‘Yes, we want to get the result but let’s do our utmost to help Vards break this record.’”
Wearing gold boots, Vardy latched on to a no-look pass by Christian Fuchs and capped a devastating counterattack. “Everyone was so genuinely happy for Vards to have achieved the record,” Fuchs says. “It was pure joy. The only other moment that could top that was when Tottenham drew against Chelsea – that was probably more emotional and intense.”
Fuchs is talking about the infamous party at Vardy’s old house in Melton Mowbray on the night Leicester achieved the unthinkable. Vardy, who spent the day at a tattoo parlour, invited his teammates around in case Spurs dropped points and Leicester were champions. Many arrived with crates of beer. Late on Eden Hazard equalised for Chelsea, prompting Vardy’s TV to be smashed and Fuchs to ask the Belgian if he could kiss his feet when they met on the final day. The celebrations went on until 4am. All the while television crews and supporters gathered outside. “Suddenly we saw Vards’s house on the telly in front of us … it was crazy,” says Fuchs. “We felt like Hollywood stars. When I drove out of the gates, you couldn’t see where you were going – just camera flashes.”
Leicester’s No 9 gets a kick out of riling opponents and opposition fans. He even learns swear words in different languages to unsettle defenders. “He kills them with kindness,” says Fuchs, chuckling. Clips of Vardy mimicking an eagle after scoring against Crystal Palace, howling like a wolf after netting against Wolves and running the length of the pitch to shush supporters spring to mind. Last August, his final act against Tottenham was to point towards the Premier League badge on his shirt.
“I never understand why fans wind him up because he’s one of the worst people you can wind up,” says the former Leicester defender Danny Simpson. “Because it gives him a lift. If he thinks he is a bit off the pace, he knows how to raise his game, be it smashing into defenders, having a bit of beef with the fans. He loves all of that. That’s a big part of his game when he’s in that zone.” Does Vardy get more stick than any other current player? “Probably,” was his own verdict this week.
“In a time where footballers are high-profile celebrities, famous figures, he is very relatable to the fans,” says Albrighton. “He has brought his non-league personality to the top level. A lot of players come through structured academies and are told to act a certain way. He’s got this raw personality and character that initially took everybody by surprise but I think now even most opposition fans actually love him.”
Central to Vardy’s success has been his straight-talking and carefree character. “He is like a big kid; you hear him before you see him,” says one of his former coaches of a player known to blast balls against the windows of Leicester’s training pavilion. This is the Vardy who wore a “Chat shit, get banged” T-shirt on their title parade, a nod to his Facebook post from 2011, when he was an unknown.
Then there is the Spider-Man costume he donned at training under Claude Puel in 2019. “Claude was giving him stick about his new red and blue ‘Spider-Man’ boots and I remember Vards saying: ‘If you want Spider-Man, you can have Spider-Man,’” says Albrighton. “He came in the next day with this morphsuit on, hid behind the bush, waited until Claude walked out, jumped out and scared him.”
This month he blew the referee David Webb’s whistle while the official lay injured. “Endless stories … not many PG ones,” says Albrighton. “He was always up to something, whether it was winding the laundry girls up or, going back a bit, hurling bread rolls at the youth team as they were singing in front of us at Christmas to get their boot money. Suddenly pigs in blankets are flying all over the canteen. He is a one-off.” Vardy’s status as a joker was cemented while playing cards or Uno on the team bus, smashing eggs with Fuchs or pranking Demarai Gray by sending a bucket of water into his hotel room.
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Vardy has his pre-match routine nailed down: three cans of Red Bull and a cheese and ham omelette. “It frustrates the fitness coaches and the nutritionists when they’re telling everyone what they should be eating and Vards, the main guy, has his own diet,” says Albrighton. In Leicester’s title-winning season, on the eve of matches, he drank port out of a Lucozade bottle. “I had a few of those with him,” says Simpson. “If you compare his body 13 years ago with now, he hasn’t changed.”
Vardy ditched his homemade Skittles and vodka cocktail only when the then Leicester physio, Dave Rennie, informed him it hampered his rehabilitation from a dead leg. “He ripped up the manual,” Walsh says.
Vardy’s story is also one of rejection. He was heartbroken by Wednesday letting him go as a schoolboy. At the peak of his powers he turned down Arsenal after they triggered his £22m release clause during Euro 2016. “He stuck with Leicester and people must give him credit for that,” Walsh says.
Vardy has not always been the best trainer but teammates count on him to deliver and view him as the ultimate team player. “Some strikers just want to score and have all of these goal accolades but he just wants to win and I think that is what sets him apart,” says Simpson. Sometimes it means home truths. “In a Jamie Vardy way,” says Fuchs, laughing. In recent years Vardy had a cryotherapy chamber installed at his Lincolnshire home to aid recovery. This season he has reported to Leicester’s Seagrave base on days off to enhance his fitness or watch training. In terms of finishing, Van Nistelrooy is perhaps best placed to comment. “Jamie is never bothered about the occasion,” the Dutchman says. “He’s always ice-cold.”
There are a trove of moments to cherish. His hat-trick in the 9-0 rout of Southampton in 2019, his strike from distance against Liverpool in 2016. “I can picture the ball coming over his shoulder, bouncing and him hitting it from about 30 yards,” says Walsh. Simpson highlights the run to the Champions League quarter-finals. “I will never forget the away goal he got against Sevilla … a good night.” Fuchs picks out Vardy’s volley against West Brom in 2018. “A ball from Riyad Mahrez came over his head, he took it first-time, just inside the box, left foot … it was one of those classic Vardy goals, something out of nothing.”
Vardy represents the best £1m Leicester have spent. “I don’t think I’m ever going to top that one,” says Walsh, stressing the signing was a team effort, highlighting Craig Shakespeare, the scout David Mills and Kevin Phillips, who coached Vardy. “I had to go to the owner, Vichai [Srivaddhanaprabha], and ask if he was prepared to pay the money, which is always difficult. But Vichai had complete trust in the staff to build a team he expected would do well … it turned out all right.”
Vardy is the last remaining member of the title-winning squad, many of whom will be present to witness him bow out against Ipswich. Vardy considers himself emotionless but the planned tributes will test his tear ducts. He plans to carry on playing but will for ever be synonymous with Leicester. “You don’t see him get too emotional away from the pitch,” Simpson says. “Maybe this time he will because it’s the last time his kids will walk on with him.”
Then, maybe, there will be one final knees-up. The class of 2016 WhatsApp group has been abuzz, the message from the firestarter typically to the point. “‘We’re having another Vardy Party, you better all make sure you’re there,’” Simpson says. “We need to celebrate him and what he’s achieved. It’s going to be weird not seeing him in a Leicester shirt, looking at the team and seeing Vardy’s not up front. Hopefully he gets that 200th goal which would be the perfect ending.”
