Vardy: Leicester's Fantastic Mr Fox
Nobody in City’s 140 years of existence has won more silverware at the Football Club. Only two players have ever scored more than his 190 goals. Just three have made more than his 464 appearances in Foxes colours. The perfect pantomime villain for opposition fans up and down the land, the 37-year-old will once again line up for the Foxes in the Premier League next season, hungry to add to his astonishing goals tally in Leicester blue. This week, it was confirmed that City’s iconic No.9 has agreed a new one-year contract at King Power Stadium – striking fear into top-flight defences for another campaign.
Although at the twilight stages of his remarkable career, his 20 goals last term – as Leicester lifted the Sky Bet Championship title for an eighth time – one of the Premier League’s most celebrated strikers is back on the big stage once again. The league’s 15th all-time top goalscorer has unfinished business in the promised land.
Across Vardy’s 12 years at the Football Club, the Sheffield-born striker has been catapulted into a status of one of the most famous footballers on the planet – a real-life embodiment of every young player’s dream. It’s been a fairy tale rise to the top.
It is truly inconceivable that Vardy thought any of his achievements at King Power Stadium could have been possible when he signed from non-league Fleetwood Town in 2012. Although it took time for him to settle in the second tier, Vardy scored 16 goals for City in 2013/14 and Nigel Pearson’s men were promoted as Championship champions with a Club record 102 points, ending a 10-year absence from the Premier League.
However, there was still no guarantee that he could establish himself in the top-flight and provide the goals Leicester would need to avoid their return being limited to a solitary season. Anyone with doubts fell silent on Sunday 21 September, 2014 as Vardy played a role in every single goal – netting one of his own – in a stunning 5-3 comeback win over Manchester United.
By the end of 2014/15, the Foxes were safe after winning seven of their last nine games to climb from bottom to 14th and Vardy was an England international. The following March, he netted for the Three Lions against Germany in Berlin just six years after leaving Stocksbridge’s Bracken Moor Stadium.
Earlier on during the 2015/16 campaign, meanwhile, Claudio Ranieri’s Foxes were everyone’s favourites for relegation. Their 5,000/1 title odds were even greater than the 1,000/1 offered for Elvis Presley being found alive.
Nonetheless, a 4-2 opening-day success over Sunderland was merely a precursor for perhaps the greatest-ever achievement in the modern history of team sport. The 10-month campaign would end with footage of Vardy hoisting the Premier League trophy aloft being beamed across the globe in May 2016. Alongside Kasper Schmeichel, Wes Morgan, N'Golo Kanté and Riyad Mahrez, he was one of the major protagonists of a season nobody – Leicester fans or otherwise – will ever forget.
Between Saturday 29 August and Saturday 28 November, Vardy scored in every single one of his 11-straight top-flight appearances – smashing a record achieved by Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2003 – and making him the only man to enjoy such an intrepid goalscoring run in a single season. In total, the former Fleetwood striker struck 24 times that year, the highest top-flight total for any Foxes striker since Gary Lineker hit the same tally 31 years earlier.
From that season onwards, Vardy has reached double figures in all but one campaign – notably finishing the 2019/20 term with 23 to his name and the Premier League Golden Boot. Elsewhere, his away goal at Sevilla in the UEFA Champions League’s Round of 16 in February 2017 ultimately proved to be vital for the Foxes in a 3-2 aggregate triumph over the Spanish side, culminating in possibly the most dramatic game ever to be staged at King Power Stadium.
Whether it be a stylish volley away at West Bromwich Albion, a sublime lob against Tottenham Hotspur at home, or the sumptuous hat-trick in the 9-0 rout of Southampton in 2019, City’s No.9 has always been a reliable source of goals. He was there again, in May 2021, as Brendan Rodgers’ side lifted the Emirates FA Cup for the first-ever time and again, three months later, as a second FA Community Shield was secured.
His European exploits weren’t finished in 2016/17 either, with subsequent runs to the knockout stages of the UEFA Europa League and the UEFA Europa Conference League still to come. Relegation last season was not in the script, but his 20-strong tally in 2023/24 – at the age of 37 – was another reminder on his timeless qualities in front of goal. He ended the season as Leicester’s top goalscorer, the stimulus for their title glory.
For a decade, Vardy has been Leicester’s main man in attack, even when others would have wound down by now. It would not be unrealistic to say there’s no other player in the game who’s experienced a story quite like Vardy’s, combining frightening agility with a lethal eye for goal and an unrelenting appetite to pester opposition defenders, often turning lost causes into legitimate opportunities in a heartbeat.
There was concern this summer that the magical Jamie Vardy story had reached its last line, but not yet. There’s another chapter yet to be written.