After moving straight from the non-league to the Championship in one fell swoop, you may of assumed at the time that Jamie Vardy’s footballing fairytale was already complete.
Fast forward to today and the whippet-like striker is the proud owner of a Premier League winners medal. But, believe it or not the proprietor of the phrase ‘talk shit get banged’ wasn’t always the model professional. Hard to believe we know.
According to Leicester City vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, when he first signed, such a drastic change in lifestyle led to the hit-man hitting the bottle…every single ruddy day.
Speaking to Thai magazine ‘A Day’, Srivaddhanaprabha revealed that he definitely had his doubts about the striker at first:
I was against signing Jamie Vardy in the first place. I asked Nigel Pearson and Steve Walsh about him, checked the scout reports, and I started to believe he would be a good signing, but I had to answer the supporters who were asking ‘how is a non-league player worth £1million?’
It turned out I was the dumbest club owner in the world to them. I asked Pearson and Walsh, if I have only £1million transfer budget for the next season, who would you buy? And they replied ‘Vardy’. Then I said ‘go’.
He continued:
Back then, I think he didn’t even have what it took to play in the Premier League. The day we bought him, he came to me and thanked me for changing his life.
He had never had this much money so he was over the moon already. He went straight from the bottom to the Championship, which eventually led him to start drinking booze every single day. We had no idea what to do.
I didn’t know about this until someone told me that he came to train while he was still drunk. So I went talk to him myself, I asked ‘do you wish to end your career like this? Do you want to stay here like this? We’ll let your contract run out, then release you. Don’t expect a better career path’.
He said he didn’t know what to do with his life. He’d never earned such a large amount of money. So I asked him ‘what’s your dream? How do you think your life should be? Just think carefully about what would you do for the club. I invested in you, do you have to do something in return?’
After that he simply quit drinking and started working hard in training. His physicality wasn’t as good as it is now. We know he had explosive acceleration, but we simply had no idea he could be this good.
He’s adapting, working on fitness training, he’s turned into a new person. And that’s better.
Marginally, Yes it is…..