How Jamie Vardy helped Hamza Choudhury integrate into Leicester City first team

Jamie Vardy doesn’t just help Leicester City on the field but off it as well.

He is normally seen as a notorious personality in the dressing room who has often been held responsible for the previous managerial sackings at the club.

However, the story of how he helped Hamza Choudhury – as told by the man himself – integrate into the first team is sure to change a few people’s perception of Vardy.

Speaking to the Mail Online, Choudhury said:

"“I had just played my second game and he (Vardy) just walked into our reserve team dressing room one day, took all my stuff off its peg and carried it in to the first-team changing room.“He basically took me in and was like, ‘You are one of us now’.“I didn’t think I had earned it. But he just grabbed my clothes and walked off.“That makes it easy. Otherwise you are thinking, ‘When am I going in? When should I do it?’“Then you go out to training and all of a sudden you are there as a first-team player rather than them being the ones you are always looking up to and wanting to be.“So, yeah, I haven’t forgotten that.”"

It is the little gestures like these from a club’s senior figure that go on a long way in defining a younger player’s career.

Who knows what if Vardy hadn’t done that? Who knows if that little act had any impact at all? What we do know is that it helped Choudhury in some description and that is all that matters. The rest, whether it will be history or misery, only time can tell.

For now, though, Choudhury seems set for history. The 21-year old has developed to the extent that he is now as important to the set-up as any other player. Five starts in six Premier League games do reflect that well.

If he continues to work on his game and keeps his head clear, then he has the potential to be one of the best in his position a couple years from now, not just in England but across all of Europe.

That statement can quite easily be made to look silly in the near or distant future but as it stands, the chances of that happening are bleak.