Jamie Vardy walks away from Leicester as one of football’s greatest stories
Hyperbolic as it so often feels to say, there truly is no room for exaggeration when stating that Jamie Vardy is one of a kind. A late-blooming force of nature who beat to the tune of his own drum, yet prioritized loyalty above all else, Vardy is a fan favorite and the personification of the spirit of football.
Against all odds, Vardy has ended his tenure with Leicester City as one of the greatest stories the sport has ever produced.
Vardy played his final game with Leicester City on Sunday, May 18 in the only way he knew how: With a goal and a win. The 38-year-old found the back of the net in the 28th minute of the Foxes’ 2-0 victory over Ipswich Town, giving the home fans one last reason to cheer for their favorite club in 2024-25.
It was a poetic ending for a player whose loyalty to Leicester City can’t be overstated—and whose goal-scoring exploits rival the greatest of all time.
Vardy concluded his Leicester tenure with 145 goals scored in the Premier League, 200 overall, and an astonishing 500 appearances in the club’s kit. If he were to retire today, he would rank No. 14 in EPL history in career goals scored—sitting just five shy of Michael Owen at No. 11 with 150.
Simply evaluating Vardy on that basis would be enough to label him a Hall of Famer and an all-time English great—but it’s the context of his success that truly defines his legacy.
Jamie Vardy: 145 EPL goals, 500 Leicester appearances, and the unbeaten path
Vardy made his Premier League debut in 2014—when he was already 27 years of age. He’d spent the previous nine seasons fighting for respect outside of Europe’s top five leagues, spending time with the Stocksbridge Park Steels, FC Halifax Town, Fleetwood Town, and even Leicester City at lower levels.
Just one season after finally making it to the Premier League, a 29-year-old Vardy scored a team-high 24 goals as Leicester City won the most unlikely major European league championship of the 21st century.
Flanked by fellow greats such as N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez, Vardy turned the Premier League on its head. With a budget that equated to a mere fraction of what the top clubs were shelling out, Leicester City stunned the masses and topped their nine-digit-spending peers.
Despite his success, conventional wisdom suggested that Vardy’s run would end just as soon as it began.
Vardy turned 30 the very next season—an age at which most football fans readily identify as the beginning of the end for star players. His production was nearly cut in half, scoring 13 goals in 35 appearances and fueling speculation that his title-winning ascension was a great story that would live on as a mere folk tale.
A year later, a 31-year-old Vardy finished with his second 20-goal season in three years—thus marking the formal beginning of a legendary defiance of Father Time.
Jamie Vardy fought Father Time—and, in many respects, won
Vardy would go on to score 91 goals between the ages of 31 and 35. That includes a 23-goal campaign in 2018-19 that allowed him to become the oldest player in Premier League history to win the Golden Boot at 33 years of age.
Vardy would score 15 goals in each of the next two seasons to prove that, even at 34 and 35, there were few in the world as gifted at finding the back of the net.
