Leicester City's Jamie Vardy has revealed he almost gave up trying to make it as a footballer - and tried to join the army instead.
The striker made the revelation in his upcoming autobiography, Jamie Vardy: From Nowhere, and wrote candidly about his devastation at being released by Sheffield Wednesday as a 16-year-old trainee.
Vardy stated that his decision to try and join the armed forces was one of several times he almost called time on attempting to make it to the top of the footballing pyramid, but he was given sharp shrift by army officials during the sign-in process over his criminal record.
Jamie Vardy almost joined the ARMY after being dumped by Sheffield Wednesday as a teenagerbit.ly/2dotpnq
He wrote: "I can’t tell you who broke it to me that I 'wasn’t big enough' to make it as a footballer. All I know is I walked out of Wednesday absolutely devastated.
"I’d supported the club all my life and now they were telling me they didn’t think I had what it took to wear that shirt.
"Disillusioned and dejected, I went back to where it all started and played a few games for York County, not far from where I lived — but a million miles away from where I wanted to be.
"I hadn’t prepared for failure. So there was nothing to fill that huge void. I was lost.
"At one stage I even tried to sign up for the Army. I went to the recruitment office in Sheffield, started filling out the form and saw the section asking about criminal records.
"I had to tell the truth — it would come up in a background check — so I circled 'Yes' (from an assault charge for a fight outside a nightclub in 2007). I told them what had happened and they said there and then that I couldn’t apply."
Vardy's career path took in stints as a trainee joiner and worker at a medical products factory while he continued to strive for a career as a part-time footballer.
The 29-year-old Premier League winner also confirmed that he had an addiction to skittle-flavoured vodka during his early years at Leicester - dissolving red and purple skittles into a three-litre bottle as he struggled to overcome a dead leg injury picked up in a match in October 2012.
It took the club's medical department to explain why his injury was taking so long to recover from before Vardy realised he needed to change his ways.
He added: "I had a dead leg — a fairly routine injury, but it was taking an age to get better.
"I had a three-litre vodka bottle at home I would put loads of Skittles sweets in.
"Once one batch had fully dissolved, I’d top it up with more — only the red or purple sweets because I don’t fancy the orange, green and yellow ones. I must have put a different batch in at least 20 times.
"After that, you can drink the vodka neat and it tastes just like Skittles. When I was bored at home in the evening I’d pour myself a glass, sit back and enjoy. The vodka was decent but it wasn’t doing much for my dead leg, which didn’t stop bleeding for ages.
"Dave Rennie, the physio, said he couldn’t believe it wasn’t improving. He’d seen a torn calf muscle heal quicker.
"He pulled me aside one day when nobody else was about. 'What are you doing? Dave asked.
'Nothing I wouldn’t normally do,' I replied. Then I explained that what I’d normally do was drink Skittle vodka.
'Well, that will be why, then,' Dave said, looking a little shocked, before going on to explain the science behind it and how the alcohol was damaging the healing process."
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