Age-Resistant, Tic Tac-Powered Jamie Vardy Deserves Shot at Golden Boot

 Jamie Vardy would be the oldest top scorer in the English top tier since Ronnie Rooke of Arsenal in 1948. Illustration: Matthew Green
Jamie Vardy would be the oldest top scorer in the English top tier since Ronnie Rooke of Arsenal in 1948. Illustration: Matthew Green
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Age-Resistant, Tic Tac-Powered Jamie Vardy Deserves Shot at Golden Boot

 Jamie Vardy would be the oldest top scorer in the English top tier since Ronnie Rooke of Arsenal in 1948. Illustration: Matthew Green
Jamie Vardy would be the oldest top scorer in the English top tier since Ronnie Rooke of Arsenal in 1948. Illustration: Matthew Green

There have been a lot of lists doing the rounds this week of the best foods to boost your immune system. These seem to be mainly things such as oily fish, yoghurt, spinach, elderberries, ginger and raw shaved garlic, although having followed these ingredients to the letter I can confirm they don’t actually make for a very nice sandwich.

From a Premier League perspective there are some notable absences from the roster of miracle foods. Cheese and ham omelettes. Shotgunned cans of Red Bull. Skittles dissolved in vodka. Chewing tobacco. Watered-down port drunk from an old Lucozade bottle.

Basically it’s worth considering anything that has, according to his own tales of pre-match intake, gone into the making of Jamie Vardy, who qualifies these days as one of the most enduring, age-resistant elite-level athletes in Europe; albeit one whose career has also been left in a particularly strange state of tension by the sporting hiatus.

It still feels a little odd to keep talking about the Premier League season as a robust and meaningful entity. In reality it doesn’t matter if the league is cancelled or postponed, or if Liverpool are actually awarded the league title.

Mainly because the human race is being menaced by a murderous plague and the world economy is about to collapse. But also because the trophy is just a symbolic reward for being the best team that season. Liverpool have so clearly been the best that to obsess over the actual pot is to lose yourself in needless literalism, which of course nobody in football would ever do.
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But there are still some unresolved questions. Spare a thought for Vardy, whose own season is one of the great unfinished subplots. It has been a slightly strange one. Vardy has 19 league goals, mainly clumped into 17 in 16 games from August to December. That run was followed by no goals in nine games, coincidently just after stories appeared suggesting Vardy had actually reformed his omelette and Red Bull intake after advice from (spare me) leading sport nutritionists.

Four days before the season was finally put into cold storage he managed to burp out a couple in a 4-0 home win against Aston Villa, putting him safely out in front in the race for the Premier League golden boot.

There is a rather overlooked addendum to this achievement. Should Vardy end up top of that list he would be the oldest top scorer in the English top tier since Ronnie Rooke of Arsenal in 1948.

There is something about the manner of this feat as much as its execution. Vardy isn’t simply hanging on. He hasn’t changed, hasn’t settled. His first yard isn’t in his head these days. It’s still right there in his feet, powered by Tic Tacs and Skittles, a man who still plays as if he wants to devour the day.

It is the same quality that was there in his Premier League debut against Manchester United five and a half years ago. United had Wayne Rooney, Radamel Falcao and Robin van Persie in attack that day. They went 3-1 up. At which stage the combined Premier League goal tallies read Rooney-RVP-Falcao 310, Vardy nil.

By the end Vardy had made four and scored one and Leicester had won 5-3. He’d run away from United’s defenders so easily they seemed to have been reduced to tiny little red-shirted figurines, Lego men left out in the middle of all that green space. He dished up the first Premier League sighting of the classic Vardy finish, all brusque, high-speed impudence. At the time we thought Leicester’s victory was telling us something calamitous about United. In fact it was telling us something glorious about Vardy.

Vardy started Leicester’s next 45 league games. They won the title. He now has 99 top-flight goals. For a while people said he’d benefitted from missing the rigours of junior pro academy life, as though this was some kind of supercharged foundling, discovered haring around the local scrub ground like a fly trapped behind a roller blind.

But Vardy has also developed as a player. He still plays as though he’s just come vaulting over the advert boards chased by farmers and policemen in old heavy serge uniforms, here to steal the lettuces and goose the goalkeeper before haring off down the high street to his getaway scooter. But he is a more complete version of himself these days, finding deeper gears, making different runs, creating as well as scoring.

And so to the break. What is it going to do to Vardy, or indeed to all those overripe high-end talents pushing the limits of their own physique? Vardy has just kept running through all this. But he will turn 34 in January. He’s a year older than Lionel Messi, three years older than Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and seven years older than Harry Kane.

Perhaps the enforced rest will allow all of these players to reset and recover from long-term pain. There is a handy precedent. Rooke had seven years away from football during the war years, six of those spent as an RAF PT instructor.

Still, though, the Vardy Supremacy feels distinct, a standalone feat of will and physicality. There hasn’t really been a career such as this in modern times, a late-bloom affair that just keeps on coming, which deserves, when we get going again, a shot at that boundary-pushing golden boot. And which is, in these times of interruption and store-cupboard lockdown, still quietly cheering.

The Guardian Sport



Top-seeds Sabalenka and Zverev Advance in Madrid

Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus celebrates after her victory over Elise Mertens of Belgium during the Madrid Open tennis tournament in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus celebrates after her victory over Elise Mertens of Belgium during the Madrid Open tennis tournament in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
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Top-seeds Sabalenka and Zverev Advance in Madrid

Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus celebrates after her victory over Elise Mertens of Belgium during the Madrid Open tennis tournament in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus celebrates after her victory over Elise Mertens of Belgium during the Madrid Open tennis tournament in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka rallied to defeat former doubles partner Elise Mertens in three sets and advance to the last 16 of the Madrid Open on Sunday.
Top-seeded Alexander Zverev scraped past Alejandro Davidovich Fokina after requiring tiebreakers in the final two sets of their match, while defending men's champion Andrey Rublev lost in three sets to Alexander Bublik.
Sabalenka got off to a poor start against the 26th-ranked Mertens, but picked up the pace to comfortably close out the match at the Caja Magica center court, The Associated Press reported.
The two-time champion in Madrid won 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 to keep alive her hopes of reaching the final for the third straight time. Sabalenka won the title in the Spanish capital in 2021 and 2023, and finished runner-up to Iga Swiatek last year.
“I think it’s one of those days where I didn’t feel my best and I got super emotional in that beginning of the first set and put myself in a tough situation," Sabalenka said. "I’m really happy that I was able to bring such a high level in the second and the third set, especially against someone like Elise, if you give her any chance, she’s going to be there fighting and putting you under pressure, so really happy with the way I turned around this game.”
It was Sabalenka's ninth consecutive victory over Mertens, her doubles partner while winning the 2019 US Open and 2021 Australian Open. Sabalenka had won 14 consecutive sets against the Belgian.
“She’s such a great player, it doesn’t matter the score between us, it’s always a great battle," Sabalenka said.
Sabalenka will next face either Rebeka Masarova or Peyton Stearns.
Zverev struggled early but recovered to fend off a gritty performance by local favorite Davidovich Fokina in the third round. The second-ranked German needed tiebreakers to outlast the Spaniard 2-6, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (0).
Zverev, seeking his third Madrid Open title, has won seven matches in a row and is coming off a title-run in Munich.
“The first set wasn’t my best tennis but it is sport and it can change quickly,” Zverev said. “I was down a set and a break and I had to fight. I am very happy with the win. Alejandro is playing unbelievable tennis, the best of his life, so I am happy to be through.”
Zverev will face either Francisco Cerundolo or Francisco Comesaña.
Defending champion upset Defending champion Rublev was eliminated after a 6-4, 0-6, 6-4 loss to Bublik.
It was the 10th top-10 win for the 75th-ranked Bublik, who made it to the fourth round in Madrid for the fourth time.
Rublev did not have to play in the previous round because Gael Monfils withdrew with an illness.
The eighth-ranked Rublev beat Felix Auger-Aliassime in last year's final in the Spanish capital.
Bublik will next face Ben Shelton or Miami champion Jakub Mensik in the round of 16.
Brandon Nakashima got past Flavio Cobolli to reach the fourth round of a Master 1000 tournament for the fifth time. The 32nd-ranked American will next meet either Daniil Medvedev or Juan Manuel Cerundolo.