Jamie Vardy and Enzo Maresca - the perfect match for Leicester City
Leicester City's latest goalscorer is also their greatest - but there are more reasons to believe Jamie Vardy is important to Enzo Maresca’s masterplan than simply the ability to stroke a penalty into the top corner.
At some point, a year or two into his Leicester City career, someone in Jamie Vardy's life - maybe his agent, maybe someone in the club's communications department, maybe even Vardy himself - decided it was time to make his post-match interviews a little less colourful and little more deadly dull.
Suddenly, almost every answer contained a variation on the theme of getting back on the training ground and how the most important thing was the three points.
For those of us who follow Leicester obsessively it was immediately noticeable, purely because it was so at odds with everything we know about Vardy's personality. He's the Skittles Vodka-drinking, Spiderman suit-wearing life and soul of the training ground he's always so desperate to get back to. He's the opposition-goading, defender-needling livewire so integral to getting those three points every week.
Nonetheless, the balance was probably important for his overall image. While some of Vardy's antics may steal the headlines, as we saw on Saturday with his Adebayor-esque run to the away end, the impression someone like Enzo Maresca must have had of Vardy prior to taking the Leicester City job this summer probably had little to do with rustling or shithousing.
A positive, not a problem
Maresca knew he was inheriting not only an all-time club icon but someone who had caused even his own idol Pep Guardiola numerous headaches. He was also inheriting the kind of personality and presence that he will have viewed as a positive rather than a problem.
Because for so long, Jamie Vardy really has been viewed as something of a problem. He’s someone we’ve even had to remind our own fans to respect.
The question has been how on earth Leicester City could ever replace him. Various managers have wondered whether Kelechi Iheanacho could do it. Brendan Rodgers toyed with Patson Daka as "the new Vardy". Claude Puel even tried to make the transition to Demarai Gray on one infamous occasion at Wembley four-and-a-half years ago.
And, by all accounts, it sounds like Maresca himself probably wanted Joel Piroe to lead the line in the new-look Leicester City. But Maresca clearly has a bit of devilment in him that's in some way reminiscent of Vardy, and the two seem to suit each other.
Managerial press conferences are now disarmingly blunt - the Wanya Marcal situation being the most obvious example. Asked whether it was a difficult decision to drop Marcal after his first goal for the club, Maresca said: "I don't care. I'm here to make decisions."
Obviously, you can say whatever you like if you're winning every week. But it was the kind of comment that showed immense strength of personality and a commitment to the good of the club more reminiscent of Vardy than any other manager since Claudio Ranieri. As with Vardy’s post-match platitudes, the subtext was: “this isn’t about me, this is about the club”.
Enzo Maresca has already alluded to Leicester’s new status as opposition-appointed title favourites - there to be shot at, although we didn’t concede many shots on Saturday. He knows more than anyone how important the right amount of self-confidence will be in this position, how vital it will be to have players who puff their chest out without worrying about the pressure.
He brought in two of those types in the summer with the arrival of Conor Coady and Harry Winks. He knew, despite the leadership problems at the club last season, he already had another in his armoury.
The Vardy role
There's been an understandable focus in recent years on whether Vardy can suit possession football, something he proved he could do during the best of the Rodgers years, but there's a sense at the moment that what he brings as an all-round package takes precedence over his tactical role.
This is partly because the importance of the centre-forward at Leicester City Football Club is arguably at an all-time low.
On occasion it's a difficult job - Iheanacho was widely derided for not holding the ball up at Norwich when he was essentially being asked to control a succession of 50-yard skimmers from Mads Hermansen with a rugged centre-back all over him and few passing options. And sometimes it's barely a job at all. The ball simply doesn't arrive at your feet and you don't get the series of chances we'd all assumed would be falling regularly to Vardy, Iheanacho and Daka against less illustrious opposition.
Almost all of the players around Vardy now are either new, young or learning to play in very different roles - so the continuity of having someone like him up front is probably very important, regardless of his suitability to the overall style.
TFW's correspondent situated slightly nearer to the dugout on Saturday, James Knight, spotted that Vardy came over to the touchline to talk to Maresca soon before Kasey McAteer was introduced in place of Abdul Fatawu - perhaps to pass on that we needed to press the ball more effectively at that point in the game. This is the kind of in-game intelligence neutrals might not associate with Vardy but which we know he possesses.
To a certain extent, we're in ultimate luxury territory here. We have four strikers who should be too good for the league and it doesn't really matter which of them plays because the overall approach and the quality of our squad is so good that eventually the goals have looked almost inevitable.
In that sense, the Championship has, relatively speaking, felt like easy street so far. We know deep down that it's not and there will be further bumps along the road.
So what we need most are players who will refuse to let complacency creep in, who will demand high standards from each of the youngsters. Players who relish getting back on the training ground and know the most important thing is the next three points.
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