TV lets us dream that Vardy’s party is not a one-off
The chances do not seem great when football and reality television get together again, writes Alan Tyers
One of the guys is a bustling, pacy 26-year-old striker – remind you of anyone?
In The Next Jamie Vardy, Leicester “ledge” seeks non-league talent for good times, flyon-the-wall documentary fun and a possible longterm professional football contract. As a TV idea, it is a bobby-dazzler.
Screening in six parts next month, this series sees Vardy “search for the next big star from nonleague football”.
The story of how he himself went from semipro football, electronic tags, factory work and being a 25-year-old also-ran to a Premier League champion by 30 is a beaut.
And don’t we all like to believe sport is full of untapped talent that just needs a break? There might be others, right? Who knows, just shift that last 10 pounds, get the boots out of the loft … it could be you. Well, possibly. Probably not. Not.
Sky has previous with this sort of “unearthing a footballer” project, in the form of Football Icon. This emerged in 2005, when contest shows like X Factor were in their pomp and it seemed sure Simon Cowell would be crushing us under his built-up heel for a thousand years.
Football Icon, though, was a dud. With Autotune, wardrobe and an undiscerning fan base, it is always possible to turn a checkout girl into a chart-topper. By contrast, the slopes of the football pyramid are slippery, pitiless steel. Season one Football Icon winner Sam Hurrell’s career tells the tale – Chelsea Youth, St Albans City, Welling United, Worthing, Working, Boreham Wood, New Orleans Jesters. Ah, that well-trodden path from Hertfordshire to Louisiana.
And so the chances of any V9 Academy recruits, in episode one mainly mid-20s, making it to the big time via the magic of television seem remote. There is a lad who was on Manchester City’s youth books until he was cut at 18 (“your world collapses”). He’s got a degree in journalism now, the poor blighter, so he really must be a glutton for redundancy punishment.
There is a beefy goalie who has played for the non-league England team. And a pocket battleship PE teacher at Chester with the heart of a lion and the legs of a dachshund.
The recruits are in the fifth tier or lower; even League Two looks like the sunlit uplands.
But what is this? One of the guys is a bustling, pacy 26-year-old striker, scored 29 last term for Tamworth and he works in a factory by day … Does that remind you of anyone?
Aside from the talent search, the programme is also a profile of Vardy. When talking directly to camera, he is awful – staring in unblinking alarm down the barrel of the lens while muttering in a menacing monotone. It looks more like the police interview tape from an armed robbery confession than an anecdote about Premier League-title party banter and is unsettling when counterpointed with a typically boisterous, all-shouting, all-the-time voice-over from dear old Chris Kamara.
But when actually unleashed, with young fans at a book signing, and with the nonleague guys as he shows them around the King Power Stadium, Vardy is decent company, a natural. And let’s be fair, an inspiration.
It is impossible not to be cynical about motives and machinations in the ruthless worlds of reality television and signing footballers, let alone when you combine the two. But it would take a hard person indeed not to wish these blokes well.
And, black swan he may have been, the fact remains – Vardy did, indeed, go from factory worker to title winner. Perhaps it really could happen again.
‘The Next Jamie Vardy’ Sky 1, Sat Sept 16 at 11.30am