The reporter reported coldly Back in the 2015/16 season, when he led Leicester City to the miracle of winning the Premier League, the question was already being asked in world football: will there be another Vardy?

To this end, in 2018, Sky Sports also deliberately looked for 10 possible candidates for 'Vardy' second in the 5th tier of the amateur league in England. They are considered to have as much potential as Jamie Vardy and can stand out without having to go through the youth system of elite clubs or a combination of super-agents, management and media.

But the cruel reality is that seven years later, none of the 10 "Vardy No. 2" candidates have made it to the top five leagues, not even the second league. It's not that there isn't enough grassroots players in the world, it's that Vardy's era is a thing of the past. In the last 10 years, the football world has become more capitalized than ever before, and social media platforms have intensified the concentration of resources in the football world to a higher degree. Coupled with the growing reliance of football professionals on big data, there are fewer opportunities left for grassroots players like Jamie Vardy.

In fact, in the 20 years before Vardy, the Premier League, even in the pre-globalisation era, did not really produce grassroots players who could come close to Vardy's achievements. That's enough to tell: Jamie Vardy and the Leicester City Miracle led by him are called miracles because the probability is as low as 1:5000 – what does that mean? The odds offered by European and American societies for the pop superstar "Elvis" Elvis to still be alive are only 1:5000.

A miracle can be a miracle because it is not reproducible in terms of probability. Finding the next Vardy may be as difficult as replicating the Kaiserslautern miracle in the top five leagues.

A once-in-50-year talent "loophole"

Ranieri, the veteran coach who co-created the Leicester miracle with Vardy, once said that Vardy was a fairy tale "once in 50 years". Vardy's life of reversal, which began at the age of 27, has so many elements that work and ultimately lead to success: in addition to personal effort, he also needs to meet Bole who can discover his true potential and do the right thing with the right people at the right time. Then there is the essential amount of luck, such as the collective slump of the main title contenders, such as a sudden shot inspiration, or a goal post that misses a few millimetres but causes the ball to go into the net......

Arsene Wenger, who has always been adept at spotting new talents, was shocked by Jamie Vardy's grassroots miracle and also signed 20-year-old left-back Brammel from England's seventh tier amateur league in early 2017 for just £40,000. But in fact, Brammer's discovery is not a copy of Vardy's model, on the contrary, he is a typical "hit video" model in the social media era to attract attention, before signing for Arsenal, Brammel also received trial invitations from Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday.

Unlike the overnight Brammer, Vardy had been scouted by Foxes recruitment director Walsh for two full seasons before signing for Leicester City. The latter also has his previous data in the amateur league for 5 seasons, winning two amateur league titles in a row, and scoring more than 120 goals in the amateur league. What's more, after joining Leicester City, Vardy also went through two years of high-intensity investigation in the Championship and one year in the Premier League, and it was really a miracle outbreak of the 2015/16 season under various coincidences.

What about Brammer? After failing to pass the scrutiny of being loaned to Birmingham by Arsenal and dropped in just two seasons, the 29-year-old is still working hard for a regular position at Portsmouth in the Championship. Vardy's popularity naturally caused clubs in the Premier League and even the top five leagues to follow the trend of "Taobao" from the amateur league, and the reason for all the failures in the end is actually very simple: this is an unexpected miracle with a very small probability after all.

Masters in the folk? Football doesn't believe it

British coach Brendan Rodgers has long asserted: "Maybe there won't be another Vardy in football". The reason is simple, Jamie Vardy can be called the "pearl" of the elite youth system, or the bug of the production line of modern professional players. Because it is a very small probability of football system "error", Vardy's success is difficult to quantify and accurately replicate, because it requires the combined action of too many uncontrollable factors.

It's not without Jamie Vardy-esque grassroots players who have the privilege of making it to the top flight. For example, Nalini, who joined Crotone in Serie A in the summer of 2016, played for the amateur team Verona four years ago, and had to rely on a welding job with a monthly salary of 1,400 euros to survive. After that, under the recommendation of the team's coach, he went to the sausage factory to work as a warehouse stevedore and administrator. Nalini was lucky to be signed by Crotone at the age of 26, who unexpectedly succeeded in the first division, and fulfilled his dream of Serie A. But he was also unfortunate because of two consecutive seasons of injuries and Crotone's limited strength, which brought his Serie A career to a sloppy end.

Even Vardy himself made a similar attempt. He founded the V9 Academy in an attempt to source talent from amateur leagues and provide them with access to the professional league and even the top league. Applications for the first batch of V9 Academy students began in May 2016 and 23 of the 84 top performers were awarded contracts with professional league clubs. However, none of them got a chance in the top five leagues. The example of the V9 Academy is enough to illustrate how wide the gap between the amateur league and the professional league is.

In the final analysis, it lies in the modern football industry, and the professional player training system in developed countries is very mature. The five major leagues basically rely on the "production line" of the professional club's own youth training system, which is already a cruel competition of one in a hundred. The five major leagues have basically completed the separation from the amateur leagues, basically closing the channel for amateur players to be promoted upwards. After all, almost all first-team players in professional clubs can be settled through player trading between professional leagues and the promotion of youth echelons. The former is ready to use and has enough experience in the professional league, while the latter is familiar with the club's tactical style and has the advantage of age, which is easy to manage.

The intensity of the highest level of professional league is naturally not friendly to amateur players. The top league is usually only two levels downwards compatible, while the top five leagues basically have at least three levels. This natural hierarchical barrier between professional and amateur leagues is also the essential reason for the rejection of Vardy's reappearance.