MARTIN O’NEILL’S judgement rarely gets called into question so it should perhaps come as no surprise that he knew Jamie Vardy’s potential all along.
Vardy has become a footballing sensation this season after hitting 22 Premier League goals during Leicester City’s remarkable run towards landing the Premier League title.
The 29-year-old was playing non-league football less than four years ago but has been instrumental in the rise of the Foxes, becoming an England international along the way and he’ll now almost certainly head to Euro 2016 with the Three Lions.
However, former Leicester winger Steve Guppy – who played under O’Neill at the club and has been part of his Republic of Ireland backroom staff since 2014 – has revealed that the Ireland boss looked into the possibility of Vardy pulling on an Ireland shirt before England got to him.
"One of the first things Martin O'Neill got me to do when I got the job [in 2014] was to find out if Vardy was Irish or not and sadly his grandparents were not," said Guppy on Newstalk’s Off The Ball.
What a shame - hats off for being ahead of the game though.
