Jamie Vardy: the outlaw who led Leicester’s title heist

Any approach from Wrexham to Jamie Vardy to help them reach the Premier League is highly unlikely to succeed. The two Hollywood big hitters who own Wrexham may see a synergy with Vardy’s filmic career – but the word is he still feels he has unfinished business at the top.

Even at 38, Vardy is reluctant to vacate the big stage. But we do know he is vacating Leicester City. He plays his final home match for the club next weekend against Ipswich Town. Two relegated sides using a top-flight ­fixture as a Championship pre-­season game is not the most ­auspicious ­send-off. It will nevertheless be poignant for Leicester supporters who are likely to file past a statue of him one day.

Vardy is perhaps the last pre-­academy enfant terrible from a non-league outpost to become a Premier League champion and England player. We can’t know that for sure, but the odds of it happening again are long.

The Leicester side who won the English title in 2016 contained one of the most sophisticated defensive midfielders ever to play here: N’Golo Kanté, who could visualise the game three moves ahead. Also present was Riyad Mahrez, the 2016 PFA Player of the Year, who went on to distinguish himself with Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.

Yet Kanté and Mahrez weren’t the public face of Leicester’s miracle 5,000-1 Premier League win. That was Vardy, he of the darting runs behind defences and lively nights out. He was, as one fellow striker from the time observes, an “outlier” and ­“racing chicken” with 6% body fat and a talent for playing fast off the shoulders of defenders.

“I’m just a pest,” he once said. “That’s all I’ve ever been. I don’t know how to play any ­different. There is no sitting off, I just go straight at them.”

Leicester were the embodiment of upward mobility in a league dominated by a cartel, while Vardy exemplified the romance of the rough diamond who starts at Stocksbridge Park Steels and motors through Halifax and Fleetwood Town into the big time.

He was Leicester’s calling card, their identity, their killer. As he approaches his final home game at the King Power Stadium, via today’s game at Nottingham Forest, the book is closing not only on his time with the Foxes but the possibility of a top player circumventing academy ­programming to become a household name.

The upstart footballer and the club who shocked the world with a 10-point title win will no longer mirror one another.

Vardy seeks employment elsewhere after a ­campaign he described as a “shitshow”. Leeds United are among the Premier League clubs on a list of ­obvious possible destinations.

His family need the money still. This month a judge ordered Vardy’s wife Rebekah to pay Coleen Rooney at least £1.4 million in legal costs after their “Wagatha Christie” libel battle – £315,000 more than the ­original figure.

He started on £30 a week at Stocksbridge but cut a swathe so fast that Leicester paid a non-League record £1m to Fleetwood Town for him only two years later. The fee looked excessive – but not for long.

He was 27 when he made his Premier League debut. At a club not known for winning things he ­managed to ­capture not only the league title and FA Cup but the Premier League Golden Boot, the Football Writers’ player of the year award, the Premier League player of the season and 26 England caps (Harry Kane stopped him ­earning more). He was the first player to score in 11 consecutive Premier League games.

Thierry Henry, he was not, in style or elegance, but he shared enough of Henry’s line-piercing ability for Arsene Wenger to want to buy him in the summer of 2016.

Wenger liked spikiness, and spirit, but must have paused, in the ­scouting report, at the story of how Vardy ­dissolved Skittles sweets in a three-­litre bottle of vodka he worked his way through during one injury ­lay-off. He told this story, against himself, in his autobiography, in the context of the physio wondering why he had been so slow to heal.

In July 2015 in a casino he used the term “Jap” to address an Asian man and was fined by the club and sent for diversity training. “The tutors explained some of the context behind the word and its meaning, dating back to the Second World War,” he wrote in his book. “I was angry at the time and I’d had too much to drink but I’d never have used the word ‘Jap’ if I’d known it was racist.”

At Stocksbridge he wore an ­electronic tag for six months after being involved in a fight outside a pub. With a 6pm curfew looming he would “jump over the fence” and race home after games to avoid missing his deadline to stay indoors. It was not the smooth ascent we associate with today’s young micro-managed Premier League stars.

Since Leicester were champions, the title has been won by Manchester City six times, Liverpool twice and Chelsea once.

Given the corporate and nation state power now shaping outcomes, Leicester’s was the greatest ­underdog win in the 130-year ­history of the English leagues. Vardy ­celebrated with cans of Stella Artois, a ­tattoo and a team party at his home. The league win wouldn’t have been ­possible without his 24 goals and his pugnacity.

The arc curves all the way to Leicester setting a record this ­season for being the first side in the top four tiers to lose eight consecutive home league games without scoring. When he goes from that stadium, next Sunday, so will the spirit of 2016.

Photograph by Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images