VICE Sports Player of the Weekend: Jamie Vardy

This story originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

We all know a Jamie Vardy, don't we? Walking into training smelling like Scrumpy Jack and last night's bosshead, the Vardy character looks designed to wear a tracksuit. It's a look completed by a copy of The Daily Sport under his arm and some oversized headphones leaking the latest baseline compilation (Jamie loves house music). Frankly, it's a wonder he has any time left for scoring goals.

And yet he does. When he's not robbing the odd crafty fag off his parents and loitering outside the local supermarket with his mandem, Jamie Vardy is scoring a shit load of Premier League goals, propelling plucky little Leicester up the table as he goes.

The definition of a red herring, Vardy doesn't look like he should be any good at football. His appearance is more befitting of that one lad you know who's worryingly good at judging the slant of pub pool tables using cues with no tips, but one should know better than to judge a book by its cover. For a while, it didn't seem like he'd ever really 'make it' in the big time, having been released from his youth contract at Sheffield Wednesday before knocking around the non-leagues. Now he's a fully-fledged England international and it's hard not to admire his path to the Premier League.

Turning out for Stocksbridge Park Steels at 16 after failing to make the grade at Wednesday, he earned a staggering £30-per-week at the club, which was presumably spent on Haribo and taking lasses to the cinema. After three years at the Steels, he secured a dream move to Halifax, which is of course a town built on dreams. Spending only one year with the Shaymen – they play at The Shay, they're not named after black magic influenced witch doctors – his goals helped contribute to the side's rise to the top of the Northern Premier League, finishing the season as champions. Less than five games into the next campaign, mighty Fleetwood Town came calling, giving Vardy a clearer route to the Football League, via the Conference.

Inevitably, he scored the goals that helped Fleetwood gain automatic promotion, and Leicester paid a non-league record £1 million for his services that summer. The rest, as they say, is history. As he chases Ruud van Nistelrooy's record streak of scoring in 10 straight Premier League matches (Ruud cost Manchester United £18.5 million 15 years ago), the Vardy story is capturing the hearts and minds of the nation. A true underdog tale, complete with an unlikely hero, the highest of highs and the odd dash of drunken racism in a casino, there isn't a football fan in the country who isn't a fan of the former non-league star (unless, of course, you're Japanese).

The secret to the sudden rise of Jamie Vardy isn't his pace, workrate or goalscoring touch, but his self-awareness and recognition of his own limits. He isn't Lionel Messi, and he doesn't try to play like him. He'll be a bastard to defenders all game, never stop running and get himself into the sort of positions that will let him smack the ball at goal as hard as he can, but he's not about to come out with rabonas and fancy-dan football. He's still playing the same way he did for £30-a-week and he's not about to stop now. The worst thing Vardy could do is believe his own hype and change, quoting Infinite Jest and listening to Bob Dylan b-sides, because that would abandon everything that has made him what he is.

Like all great British things, the fact that Vardy is just a little bit shit is what has endeared him to the nation. Much like Bruce Forsyth, Gogglebox, The Great British Bake Off, Ant and Dec and the Royal family, we're a nation that doesn't like nice things. We like a little bit of grit and a naughty streak. That's why Cheryl off the X-Factor and Girls Aloud is a national hero, despite once kicking the shit out of a nightclub toilet attendant and subsequently being tried for racially aggravated assault. Susan Boyle – a woman who was treated like someone that sits in their own piss on a bus when she first appeared on TV – is now an international superstar, propelled by our desire to spread our detritus on a global scale. Jamie Vardy is in good company, and the better he gets, the more important it becomes that he's a flawed individual.

Who knows what the future holds for Vardy. Judging by his current trajectory, he'll be FIFA President early next year, after a successful stint at a Champions League winning Real Madrid side, with the Ballon d'Or sat on his desk. More likely though, given his penchant for the culturally insensitive, it's the England captaincy.

But today, for services to success in the face of being inherently shit, Jamie Vardy will have to make do with the VICE Sports Player of the Weekend award.

@bainsxiii