Jamie Vardy has always been an unpredictable, lovable rogue. But the Artful Dodger of the Leicester City team was always as skilled and deadly as he was totally bonkers.
Nobody seems to be as revered or loved as "Vards" at LCFC; possibly only the late, great architect of previous Foxes success, Khun Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha. Yet, the path to such adulation was far from linear.
Vardy endured an arduous transition from the gritty hinterlands of non-league football to the exigencies of the EFL Championship. He candidly assesses that only an indefatigable work ethic permitted him to flourish in that division, and, subsequently, the Premier League.
The former England international centre forward also partially credits one-time City manager Nigel Pearson for the alchemy of his achievements on Filbert Way. Pearson, whom an infant Vardy had watched as a player for Sheffield Wednesday, was the disciplinarian who 'pulled his striker into line'.
Jamie Vardy at Leicester City
When the boisterous professional, grappling with an intense rise in expectations, requested a loan back to Fleetwood Town, the LE2 gaffer steadfastly refused. Pearson, it seems, possessed the prescience to see the burgeoning greatness that lay just beneath the surface of Vardy's erratic energy.
"pulling him into line proved a club-wide job."The Guardian
However, the specific aspect in Vardy's professional epiphany remains a compelling piece of King Power lore. The man who confronted Vardy at training for arriving in a state of inebriation (drunk, in the author's words) was a profound surprise.
"Around the same time the club’s then vice-chair, Aiyawatt “Top” Srivaddhanaprabha, pulled him to one side after he had arrived to training drunk. “Of course it happened, it had to at one point,” Vardy says. But instead of plummeting as quickly as he had soared, back to earning £120 a week with Stocksbridge Park Steels and largely treating football as an engaging side gig, Vardy shaped up and shone."
It was not the firebrand Pearson but rather the typically retiring, then-vice chairman, Khun Top (Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha), who initiated an intervention. This quiet confrontation by the hierarchy's scion supposedly served as a pivotal moment of reckoning.
Ultimately these two men helped a wayward talent to transform into the talismanic figure who would eventually spearhead one of the most improbable sporting triumphs in history. Vardy consequently concentrated and made it big.
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