Jamie Vardy has said he would not repeat his career even if he could, describing the journey from non-league football to Premier League title winner as relentlessly hard on both body and mind. Speaking to mark a new documentary about his rise, the striker was characteristically self-deprecating. "I was just a little freak in the works," he told the Guardian. "It's not the common way of doing things. I don't think it will probably happen again, but it did happen for me."
The documentary traces a path that began with Vardy working in a warehouse manufacturing walking frames and crutches, before he eventually reached the top flight and became central to Leicester City's improbable title triumph. His agent, speaking to BBC Sport, described the early years in blunt terms: a raw, caged animal given to drinking, partying and fighting. Vardy himself told the BBC that the physical and psychological demands of rising through non-league football into the Premier League were "a killer" — a description that carries more weight given how rarely such a trajectory has been completed at all, let alone with the success he achieved.
Leicester's title-winning season remains one of the most discussed in modern English football. Vardy has spoken before about the collective spirit that underpinned it, and the documentary appears to revisit the bonds formed among players who came to think of themselves as outsiders within a league full of established forces. That camaraderie, by his own account, was as important as any tactical arrangement.
Now, with his playing career winding toward its conclusion, Vardy has taken it somewhere few expected. He has joined Cremonese, the Italian Serie B club, and has been adapting to his new surroundings with the same directness that marked his playing style. According to 90min, he has already begun learning Italian — including, by his own admission, the more colourful corners of the vocabulary. At his unveiling as a Cremonese player, a reporter questioned whether his age made the move a gamble. Vardy's response, 90min reports, was sharp and unambiguous: he intends to prove the doubters wrong.
It is a familiar posture for someone whose entire career has been built on proving points that most onlookers assumed could not be proved. Whether there is enough left in him to make a meaningful impression in Italian football is a question only time will settle, but the appetite, at least, appears undimmed.