Jamie Vardy played with Harry Kane for club and country, but the England captain isn't his favourite strike partner.
Instead, the honour goes to one-cap wonder David Nugent, the former Preston star, who scored in his only England appearance back in 2007, played with Vardy early on in the 35-year-old's Leicester career and helped the club earn promotion to the Premier League in 2014.
Vardy and Nugent scored 36 goals between them in the 2013-14 campaign, one year after Kane's brief stint on loan with the Foxes, and both were on target in September 2014 during a 5-3 Premier League victory over Manchester United. However, while Vardy n went on to become Leicester's highest ever Premier League goalscorer, Nugent had just one year in the top flight under Nigel Pearson.
"I always say the same answer," Vardy told Michael Calvin's Football People when asked about his favourite strike partner. "It's one of my old team-mates, David Nugent.
"It's sheerly on how we were together as a partnership. Everything just clicked, everything worked.
"[We] both knew exactly what the other was going to do, so the other striker would so the complete opposite. It worked an absolute treat and I always enjoyed my time when I was playing up front with Nuge."
Nugent ended up leaving Leicester in 2015, with his last goal coming in a victory at West Brom which helped propel the team to their great escape. He was most recently on the books of Preston, returning for a second stint with the Lancashire club between 2019 and 2021.
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Vardy has scored more than 130 Premier League goals for Leicester, including 24 in the 2015-16 season as they won the title under Claudio Ranieri, though he is still some way shy of Kane's tally. He signed a new deal over the summer, but has only scored one league goal since.
He also has 26 senior England caps - all won while a Leicester player - and seven goals for the Three Lions. However, he stepped away from the national side shortly after the 2018 World Cup, having made one start and three substitute appearances during the tournament in Russia.
"Once I heard it was something the Club was looking at, there was only one thing that was going to happen, and I was going to sign it," Vardy told club media upon signing his extension. "The decision was easy.
“I’ve been here long enough now that I feel like part of the furniture. I think you can see with the way we’re trying to play, the way the Club’s wanting to go, that it’s going to be onwards and upwards.
