November 22, 2024
Jamie Vardy’s rags-to-riches story from non-league to England international will inspire thousands of lower league players
FOR the thousands of footballers who play in non-League, Jamie Vardy is living proof their dreams can still come reality.
For those below-the-radar players who put up with the backwaters, the muddy pitches, the pocket money salaries and the constant juggling of football with a day job, Vardy’s incredible rise to the top is a real inspiration.
Jamie Vardy celebrates scoring in his seventh consecutive league game against Crystal Palace on Saturday. Getty Images
This is a fairytale where new chapters keep being written, with Vardy taking his goal tally to 10 for the season on Saturday as he scored in a seventh consecutive Premier League game.
The happy result is that his Leicester City team are fifth in the table, just three points off leaders Manchester City and already free of the relegation anxieties of last season.
This season has already seen the striker capped for England in their Euro 2016 qualifiers against San Marino, Estonia and Lithuania. The form forward in the country, Vardy has an excellent chance of going to Euro 2016.
And more history is in his sights. As Leicester travel to West Brom at the weekend, Vardy will be aiming to score in an eighth consecutive top-flight game.
This will draw him level with Liverpool’s Daniel Sturridge, whose run finished in February 2014, and Manchester United’s Ruud van Nistelrooy, whose scoring streak ended in January 2002.
Beat that and Vardy will just have Van Nistelrooy’s run of scoring in 10 consecutive Premier League games up to August 2003 to eclipse.
That would be a phenomenal achievement – bear in mind too that Vardy is a Leicester player and, with all due respect, doesn’t have the service available that Van Nistelrooy did at United back then.
After West Brom, the Foxes take on Watford and Newcastle United so the feat is eminently possible. Indeed, he could surpass the Dutchman by scoring against Man United on November 28.
At present, he looks capable of scoring against anyone and, according to some reports in Spain, that form has even attracted interest from Real Madrid. Now that really would be a rags-to-riches tale worthy of Hollywood.
Vardy is now 28. When he was 25, he was still playing in non-league with Fleetwood Town.
In an age when footballers as young as eight or nine are being hoovered up into academies by the leading clubs and set off on the treadmill of coaching programmes, youth ranks and loan spells, Vardy’s progress is a reminder of how things used to work.
It is now rare to see a player emerge that hasn’t been through the academy process, to see someone flourish who is familiar with the unglamorous rough and tumble of the non-league.
The likes of John Barnes, Ian Wright, Stuart Pearce, Les Ferdinand and Chris Waddle all played beneath the Football League and had to graft to get their big break.
Leicester signed Vardy from Fleetwood Town for £1.7 million for the beginning of the 2012/13 season. Getty Images
Another was Crystal Palace manager Alan Pardew, who spoke on the subject of Vardy’s rise before watching the striker score the winner against his team on Saturday.
Pardew, who played for five non-league clubs before joining second division Palace in 1987, said: ‘I think it’s important someone like myself highlights Vardy because it is important for the game.
‘When you’re playing non-league you’ve still got a chance of that dream. There is always an avenue to give players that dream of what Vardy is doing right now.
‘There can be certain pampering being done in the academies that softens players. There is no chance of that in non-league.’
As Vardy knows all too well. He started his career at Stocksbridge Park Steels, a club based in a small town wedged between the city of Sheffield and the northern fringes of the Peak District.
They played in the Northern Premier League – the seventh tier of the English game – during Vardy’s time. Their Bracken Moor ground holds 3,500 people and one end is just a grassy bank – a far cry from Wembley Stadium.
The forward, released by Sheffield Wednesday’s academy as a teenager for being too small, combined playing for Stocksbridge for £30-a-game with back-breaking work in a carbon fibre factory.
He admitted in recent interviews that rushing from 12-hour shifts on the factory floor to training or matches with Stocksbridge meant his only nutrition came from fast food outlets at motorway service stations.
There was also the weeks when the 20-year-old Vardy played with an ankle tag following a criminal conviction for assault. Vardy says he was sticking up for a deaf friend who was being mocked by some youths.
Another condition of his conviction was a 6pm curfew, meaning he would sometimes have to be subbed off in matches on the hour mark and make a quick getaway in his parents’ car to get home in time.
‘It was a case of hoping that we were winning, taking me off and making sure I was home,’ he said.
Of course, Vardy’s main business was scoring goals and 66 in 107 league games for Stocksbridge led to a move across Yorkshire to FC Halifax Town in 2010.
Having reformed two years earlier, the £15,000 spent on Vardy was the first money the phoenix club had spent on players.
A year later, after 27 goals had delivered Halifax the Northern premier League title, that value had increased 10-fold as Vardy was bought by ambitious Conference side Fleetwood Town.
It proved excellent business for the Shaymen, whose chairman David Bosomworth told Sportsmail earlier this year: ‘We always knew he was special. He had hunger, desire and work-rate.
‘I hope his story is a message to players rejected by Football League clubs who think about packing it in. Don’t. Go into non-league and show what you can do.’
It soon became apparent that Fleetwood was just another stepping stone for the prolific forward, now earning £850 a week.
He scored 31 goals and guided the Lancashire team into the Football League for the first time. For some games, as many as 30 scouts from bigger clubs would descend on their Highbury Stadium.
Among the many managers who admired Vardy was Roy Hodgson, then in charge of West Brom, and the Baggies tried to sign him. Little did we know then that Vardy would eventually work with Hodgson at an even higher level.
Their mission to reach the League complete, Fleetwood sold Vardy to Leicester City in May 2012. The fee was £1m, potentially rising to £1.7m, and a non-league record.
Nigel Pearson was key in persuading Vardy to choose Leicester ahead of his other suitors. It was the Sheffield Wednesday connection – Vardy grew up near Hillsborough, Pearson was the Owls skipper.
But it was far from an auspicious start. The striker struggled for form and, after criticism from fans, even considered quitting football at the end of his first season at the East Midlands club.
Again, it was Pearson, with assistant Craig Shakespeare, who persuaded Vardy to carry on – with spectacular results.
16 goals in the 2013-14 season guided Leicester back to the Premier League as champions and we all know the rest of the story.
The question now is how much more can Vardy, the embodiment of dreams coming true in football, go on to achieve?- dailymail.co.uk
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