Jamie Vardy had one thing on his mind when an ink-filled needle pricked into his ribs and no, it wasn’t the tattoo. The news that Jamie Vardy was having a party that night had been coming out across the world.
Tottenham v Chelsea. A game that in the end will decide the fate of Leicester City. All the Leicester players gathered to watch the game at Jamie Vardy ‘s house, hoping Chelsea would deny Tottenham the win. If Spurs were to win, it would do exactly that for Vardy’s Leicester City, who was 5,000-1 to win the title at the start of the season.
All the players, nervous and excited, gathered in front of the TV in Jamie’s living room. The mood evaporated quickly from the room as Tottenham did not score one goal, but two goals, and Chelsea looked dead and buried.
Yet somehow, it wasn’t over. Chelsea pulled one back and the lads began to believe once more. Eden Hazard was holding the ball on the left wing, playing an exquisite one-two with Diego Costa and curling it beautifully into the top corner.
The household in Vardy had exploded. The players couldn’t quite believe they were six minutes and a half away from winning the Premier League.
At Stamford Bridge the whistle blew and the Leicester lads went crazy. Some were on the phone calling their loved ones straight away, others were in shock running about and others had calling take a moment to themselves to consider what had just happened. Then there were tears.
Winning the Premier League is something Vardy, who played non-league for Fleetwood Town just four years before, seemed unimaginable. In fact, when Jamie Vardy was released from Sheffield Wednesday’s boyhood club, he gave up on becoming all together a professional footballer. This had shattered his dreams, he was saddened that the club he loved no longer wanted him around.
Vardy started working at a factory called Trulife and was playing football for Stocksbridge Park Steels on a Sunday where he spent the best seven-year stretch. He then went on to play for Halifax Town where, after scoring 26 times in 37 games, he was on the radar of several football league clubs and had trials at Crewe Alexandra which was unsuccessful and offered a short-term deal with Rotherham, which he rejected as he did not want to leave his full-time job in the factory, only to be told that by the end of the season he was not in need at Rotherham.
When Vardy’s agent asked what he knew about Fleetwood Town he said “nothing, never heard of them.” His agent told him to look them up and when Vardy asked why, his agent replied “because you’re signing for them tonight.”
He wasn’t going to be there for a long time though; halfway through the season several football league clubs, including Leicester City, tried to sign Vardy, but the Fleetwood manager insisted that he would go anywhere until the end of the season. The club had spent money on getting to the league of football and they felt like Jamie Vardy was an integral part of the plan.
£ 1 million, the highest transfer fee any non-league player has ever paid. Leicester City had signed for one million pounds on Jamie Vardy from Fleetwood Town.
He helped bring Leicester back into the Premier League in his first season at Leicester, however his first season at the Foxes was coupled with his own loss in form, and he was criticized on social media by some City fans.
He quickly became the favourite of fans in the coming seasons, however.
Fast forward to the present day and Vardy plays for England, has played for Leicester in the Champions League and, of course, the best of them all, has won the English Premier League, something any young football fan dreams of.
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