Jamie Vardy predicts rise from non-league to Premier League winner won’t happen again: ‘I’m a freak’

Leicester City’s odds of winning the Premier League title were 5,000-1 at the beginning of the 2015/16 season.

Had you told a young Jamie Vardy he’d play a leading role in that fairy tale when he was turning out for eighth-tier Stocksbridge Park Steels, he’d have no doubt added several more zeros to those odds.

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In fact, he would have laughed you out of the room, as he did when his now long-time agent John Morris banged on his door to sign Vardy and, to his astonishment, told the hungover non-league striker he could one day play for England.

Vardy’s unprecedented and rapid rise saw him move to Halifax, then Fleetwood Town, before signing for Leicester City in the summer of 2012 for £1m to play under one of his idols – the former Sheffield Wednesday captain Nigel Pearson.

His incredible story now forms part of a new Untold documentary which airs on Netflix from May 12.

“I am just a freak,” said Vardy, speaking to talkSPORT and other assembled media ahead of the launch.

“I don’t think it [a rise from non-league football to winning a Premier League title] will happen again, yet it happened for me. It was hard work. It really was tough, but all worth it.”

Vardy doesn’t just call himself a freak. Right at the start of the documentary, in which he appears alongside his wife Rebekah Vardy, Morris and fellow title winners Wes Morgan and Marc Albrighton, the 39-year-old is asked to describe himself in just one word.

He pauses, a little flummoxed, then asks for a phallic-shaped bottle opener, grabs a beer and takes a quick swig.

His eyes light up and he finally settles upon the word… “t***!”

“I’d probably say I used that term because of the abuse I get when I am at away games,” said a smirking Vardy. “I know I give it back, but it’s just one of those things…

“They [the fans] are targeting me for a reason, so they must think some bad of me but, listen, I do the talking on the pitch on that side of things. That’s the reason why I used the word ‘t***’.”

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When pushed to pick a more positive word, Vardy settles upon “joker”.

When asked to do the task, his peers were rightly far more complimentary, labelling him a ‘legend’ and ‘leader’, as well as highlighting his drive and speed.

The enormity of what Vardy has achieved is crystal clear to others, but even ten years after winning the Premier League, it still hasn’t quite sunk in for the Sheffield-born striker.

Perhaps that’s because Vardy’s career didn’t end in 2015/16 when he scored 24 goals as Leicester gave football arguably its greatest underdog story.

He would go on to make 500 appearances for the Foxes between 2012 and 2025, scoring 200 goals.

He’d play in a Champions League quarter-final against Atletico Madrid in 2017, scoring in the 1-1 home draw.

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He’d win the 2021 FA Cup as Leicester beat Chelsea at Wembley. And Vardy is still turning out for Serie A side Cremonese, where he’s scored five times this season.

There will be time to reflect on a career that’s also seen Vardy break Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record by scoring in ten-straight Premier League games, and win 26 England caps, appearing at both Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup.

“I’ve not really thought about the future. I know it p***** John [Morris] off as well,” admitted Vardy, who has no desire to go into management when he hangs up his boots.

“I’m very much a ‘get today out the way, go to sleep and see what tomorrow brings’ [person]. I’ve always been like that, which is annoying to some I know…”

Vardy takes a breath and, with impeccable timing, his wife Rebekah promptly interjects with, “It’s infuriating!”

“That’s just how I have always been,” Vardy continues. “I’ve always said when the legs tell me it’s enough then that will be the day [to retire].

“Fortunately for these boys [Vardy slaps his legs] are still telling me they are fine at the minute.

“If my legs were gone, I’d still love football, but I wouldn’t put myself through all this. When they say ‘enough’s enough’ then that is finito.”

Vardy’s journey has not just been unorthodox — it has been full of challenges.

He grew up in a working-class home in the Hillsborough area of Sheffield. He worked in a factory to help make ends meet given his Stocksbridge contract was worth just £30 per week.

And although his rise through football’s professional ranks was rapid and eventually well compensated, Vardy still clung to some non-league habits, including drinking and partying after games with his life-long friends, known collectively as ‘The Inbetweeners’ after
the popular sitcom.

The close bond he has maintained with ‘The Inbetweeners’ is one of the most touching and fun parts of the Untold documentary.

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Vardy is still in an active and colourful WhatsApp group with what he calls his “no nonsense” pals. And yet he also admits he realised after around a year at Leicester that he had to clean up his act.

In 2012/13, during his first season at the King Power Stadium, Vardy scored just five goals. He was unhappy and sought a return to Fleetwood.

He drank frequently as a coping mechanism, and even turned up to training drunk on at least one occasion, forcing Pearson and the now-Leicester chairman Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha to intervene.

“Of course that happened,” said Vardy, acknowledging
he was tipsy at training.

“It had to happen at one point. Listen, that was right at the start. That’s when I was really struggling to find form and stuff like that. I had already told Nige [Nigel Pearson] that I wanted to go back to Fleetwood, which thankfully he didn’t let me do.

“Comments like that [being told to get his act together by Top] are massive as well. At that time, we didn’t see the owners as much as we did over the years [that followed]. They were always at the training ground and coming in and speaking to the lads.

“And then it was probably from the following season [2013/14] when the group got even closer. And the owners, Top and [the late Leicester owner] Khun Vichai, bless him, were always in and wanting to be in the mix with the lads. And I think that’s what brought the togetherness through.

“Everyone was on the same page and able to have fun. If we went on a night out, the owner [Khun Vichai] and Top, they’d want to come for the meal and be fully involved.

“Personally, at that time, I actually got to speak with Nige [Pearson], Walshy [Steve Walsh] and Shakey [assistant coach Craig Shakespeare] because I was seeing them every day at training, so it was easier to talk to them.”

Vardy confirms he has never sought professional help for alcohol consumption but admits to speaking to a club psychologist at Leicester about it.

Along with the support of senior Leicester figures, meeting his wife, Rebekah in 2014, was also a key turning point in Vardy maturing and ultimately realising his full potential on the pitch.

Vardy met Rebekah on a night out and didn’t make a strong or sober first impression, but he persisted in courting her. The pair soon fell in love and were married in May 2016 and now have three children
together.

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Several of Vardy’s friends, teammates and coaches noticed a positive change on and off the field after Vardy settled down with Rebekah.

He had already scored 16 Championship goals as Leicester got promoted with a club-record 102 points in 2013/14. And in 2014/15 three of his five Premier League goals would come during Leicester City’s ‘Great Escape’ during which the Foxes won seven of their final nine games to somehow avoid relegation despite being bottom between match weeks 13 and 31.

Vardy’s most important goal was a 90+1’ winner in a 3-2 victory at West Brom on April 11, 2015, while another key moment came the week before as Leicester beat West Ham 2-1.

This was the victory that kickstarted the Great Escape and, fittingly, it came on April 4 – the 57th birthday of Leicester owner Khun Vichai, who tragically died in a helicopter crash when leaving the King Power Stadium on 27 October, 2018.

Khun Vichai had told the squad to mark his birthday with a season-altering three points. Leicester’s superstitious Thai owner even had monks bless the players with special prayers.

Vardy didn’t quite score the winner against West Ham, but it was his mishit shot that Andy King turned in with four minutes of the match left.

The victory over West Ham not only came on Khun Vichai’s birthday but just days after Richard III’s remains were ceremonially reinterred in Leicester Cathedral after they were discovered in a car park.

And it was not lost on Khun Vichai – and plenty of Leicester fans as well – how a ‘King’ catalysed Leicester’s imperious run of form that would not only see them survive but lay the foundations for their Premier League triumph the following campaign.

Fate in many ways appeared to be on Leicester’s side, but the 2015 offseason still threw up a major surprise as Pearson departed due to what the club billed as “fundamental differences in perspective”.

Former Chelsea boss Claudio Ranieri came in, an appointment that was widely derided at the time, yet he proved to be an inspired hire.

The Italian would lead Leicester to the title, losing just three games and finishing 10 points clear of Arsenal and 11 ahead of Spurs who, although they finished third, were Leicester’s main rivals for much of the season.

“Claudio obviously deserves credit,” said Vardy, who threw a May 2 watch party at his house on the night Leicester were confirmed as champions courtesy of Eden Hazard’s equaliser for Chelsea against Spurs.

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“When Claudio came in, he pulled us all together. He said he’d watched the Great Escape the season before, and that he hardly wanted to change anything, which I think was right for the group we had. We had Nige’s foundations, so it was about getting that back into a place to go and kick on again.

“Do I think we could have done it if Nige was still there? We possibly could have because there wasn’t much different from what we were doing from the previous season. 

“Listen, this is football. Managers always come and go. Players come and go. That’s just how it is in our job. We just got back in [following Pearson’s departure] and treated it as a normal season, and off we went. But it wasn’t that normal of a season!”

Leicester lifted the 2015/16 Premier League trophy at home to Everton on May 7, 2016, with Vardy scoring twice in the game; while Andrea Bocelli, at the request of Ranieri, provided the soundtrack to the celebrations, performing both ‘Nessun Dorma’ and ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ on the pitch.

Several Premier League champions would say farewell to Leicester in the years that followed, although the players remain close to this day in a WhatsApp group.

N’Golo Kante immediately left for Chelsea, and Danny Drinkwater would join him at Stamford Bridge a year later. Riyadh Mahrez was sold to Manchester City in 2018, the skipper Morgan retired in 2021, and Kasper Schmeichel left for Nice in 2022.

Vardy also had the chance to move as well, and was heavily linked with Arsenal in the summer of 2016, yet by the time he called time on his Leicester career last summer he was, perhaps aptly, the only title-winning player left at the club.

Vardy’s swansong for the club was bittersweet. Leicester’s relegation to the Championship was already confirmed with Vardy calling the 2024/25 season “a total embarrassment” and “a s**t show” on social
media.

And, as someone who still follows Leicester’s results closely, he admits the club’s subsequent relegation to League One was “tough… and not nice to see”.

Yet from a selfish and statistical perspective, Vardy couldn’t have scripted a finer farewell for himself. He decided to bring the curtain down on his Leicester career at home to Ipswich Town on May 7, 2025, in the penultimate game of last season.

It was Vardy’s 500th appearance for the club and he went into that game on 199 Leicester goals. And it was no surprise to anyone that he needed less than 30 minutes to bring up his double century.

“I thought 500 [appearances] was a good number,” said Vardy. “To be fair, I had spoken about it with my wife and John [Morris] and it was time for a change. 500 was the perfect number in my eyes.

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“I spoke to the club about it. I just turned around and said, ‘Look, I’d rather finish it on 500 at home with all the fans instead of Bournemouth away the week after.'”

“I didn’t want to go to Bournemouth with about 1,000 Leicester fans there and be saying my goodbyes. They completely agreed and were really helpful in letting me do it that way.

“And waking up that morning, there was no way I wasn’t scoring that day. So, 500 [appearances] and 200 [goals for Leicester]: they were very good round numbers to finish on.”

Vardy is going to have to face life after football soon, although it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see him back playing non-league football deep into his forties.

He knows the odds are astronomical of another player coming through in his mould, but his own journey has taught him to never rule out the seemingly impossible.

“If I’m honest, I think it’s more about some teams being afraid to take the risk,” said Vardy.

“Let’s say you get to a January transfer window and you’re fighting relegation, are you going to take the risk on someone [from the lower leagues]? Or are you going to go for experience of someone who has been involved in that dogfight?

“If you’re at the other end, you probably say, ‘We’ve got a chance of going up here, he’s been promoted twice, we’ll get him’ rather than taking a risk on someone who has no league experience.

“There’s definitely talent in non-league football. To be fair, the non-league lads today are probably looking after themselves better than what I was doing when I was younger. They’ve still got a chance, but I think it is always going to be tough nowadays. 

“And possibly the main thing our title win did was give the so-called smaller teams the ambition to want to try to do it and gave them a belief it can happen.

“What you saw with Leicester is that it was the group of lads that were the right fit together. So if you get the right group, the right players for each position and the right mentality, I think anything can still happen.

“It’s tougher, because the bigger teams are just like, ‘We’ll have him. £90m – there you go!’ It’s easier for them to get the players in. It’s just the clubs underneath [the big teams] that have to be a bit streetwise and savvy with their transfers.”

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‘Streetwise’ is another fitting word to describe Vardy. His electric speed, unapologetic directness, ruthless finishing and, of course, cheeky smile give him an everyman quality – perhaps best exemplified by his serial guzzling of Red Bull right before games.

Vardy is fuelled, much like the average amateur footballer, by bravado, gut instinct and a bit of sugar in his blood, not sculpted through sports science or a classic Academy upbringing.

And against this backdrop, Vardy may still half-jokingly choose to dub himself a ‘t***’ – and he’s certainly riled his fair share of opposition players and fans – but he’ll be remembered as one of football’s most charismatic and clinical players.

There is a debate to be had as to whether Vardy is worthy of making the Hall of Fame like Alan Shearer or Thierry Henry, but few would dispute he’ll go down as a Premier League icon.

Jamie Vardy’s Untold story airs on Netflix from May 12.