When good things happen. Even the disclosure by the club’s vice (nice pun!) chairman, Aiyawatt Srivaddanaprabha, of a Jamie Vardy arriving at training sessions inebriated after his Leicester City move from lower league club Fleetwood on an eye popping £1m can be seen through rose tinted spectacles. Vardy, his head turned in with the gigantic pay rise and the associated pressure got his rocks off by knocking back a few. There weren’t many expecting big things from the 26 year old. In fact, the Thai owners were criticized for blowing up this big wad of cash on a then unknown.
It was left to Aiyawatt to give some sort of calculated Buddhist Zen self enlightenment intervention to Vardy and get his career turned around. And it has worked.
“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.”
Vardy’s already broken Ruud Van Nistelrooy’s consecutive goal scoring record, 11 in 11 matches on his way to a tally of 24 goals this season. He has cemented his place in England’s Euro 2016 squad. Not bad, not bad at all. He could have been a drunk, a racist, but he chose a better way out.