Cult Heroes and Club Icons: Kevin Phillips, the Jamie Vardy trailblazer

Before Jamie Vardy's meteoric rise from toiling in non-league ranks to starring for a Premier League-winning side, former Sunderland goal machine Kevin Phillips took a similar route to the top flight.

For every Messi blessed by the football gods and signed as an 11-year-old, there are hundreds of players looking up the rungs of football, where once-sanguine hopes transition with time to forlorn expectations.

Names like Charlie Austin, Troy Deeney, and Chris Smalling dot the footballing map of non-leaguers who have made the Premier League leap. And before them, were the likes of Jimmy Bullard, Steve Finnan, and Les Ferdinand, who overcame early-career exclusion to reach the heights of top-flight football.

Rejection and non-league purgatory

Like Vardy, Phillips was on the outside of association football looking in, after rejection from Southampton's academy prompted a move to non-league Hertfordshire side Baldock Town. Deemed too small to play up top while an apprentice at Southampton, Phillips was shifted to the back.

Phillips started his four-year spell at Baldock Town as a defender, before injuries forced manager Ian Allinson to move the diminutive attacker back to his position of preference. Then 18, Phillips scored a brace in his first match as striker that lead to a move to then-second-tier side Watford for a reported fee of £10,000 plus four additional payments of £5,000.

A pittance for a player that would become the only English-born player to lead Europe's top leagues in scoring.

Gradual ascension to the top

Phillips' four years with the Hornets saw club and player follow antagonistic arcs. Watford dropped from the second to third tier after the 1995-96 season just as the Hertfordshire-born attacker's career was gaining momentum.

An ankle fracture and subsequent serious ligament damage saw Phillips miss a year of football, and when he returned, Watford was floating water mid-table two rungs from the Premier League.

In July 1997, Phillips was signed by Sunderland for a £325,000 fee after the Black Cats were bounced from the top flight. Consecutive third- and first-place finishes saw the Wearsiders return to the Premier League courtesy of the striker's goal-scoring exploits.

Phillips became the first Sunderland player to score 30 goals in a season since Brian Clough did so in 1961-62, as the emerging talent appeared poised for the Premier League.

Promotion was cemented towards the end of the 1998-99 Division One season when Phillips scored four of the Black Cats' five goals at Bury, with the forward finishing the campaign with 23 league goals in 26 matches.

Despite tempered expectations, Phillips paired with Niall Quinn to form a "little and large" strike tandem to stellar results, scoring 30 goals to the lanky Irishmen's 14 in 1999-2000. The 30 goals not only led the Premier League, but was also the highest total in Europe's marquee leagues, earning Phillips the European Golden Shoe award. He is still the only Englishmen to garner the honour.

Two years later, amid interest from several clubs after Sunderland was relegated, Phillips ditched the north for the south, signing with Southampton ahead of the 2003-04 season on a four-year, £3.25-million deal.

Now 30, Phillips continued to defy both age and expectations, scoring 24 times in 64 appearances for the club that cut him as an 18-year-old in 1991. After 27 consecutive seasons in the top-flight, Southampton was relegated in June 2005, and again, Phillips made a move to prolong his top-tier tenure.

A move to Aston Villa was followed by transfers to West Brom, Birmingham City, Blackpool, and Crystal Palace before Phillips' final spell as a footballer connected him with a player who would later emulate his rise.

The Leicester City connection

Phillips was signed by Championship side Leicester City on a short-term deal in January 2014.

He made his debut for the club as a substitute on Jan. 18 against Leeds United, coming on for none other than Vardy.

With the Foxes slated for a return to the top tier after winning the Championship at the end of the 2013-14 season, Phillips announced his retirement from football, and made his last appearance on matchday 38 against Doncaster Rovers.

Phillips then spent a season as Nigel Pearson's assistant upon the club's return to the Premier League where he witnessed first-hand Vardy's ascension from an unknown commodity to an England star.

Speaking to reporters in May 2015 after Vardy earned his first England call-up, Phillips was delighted for the player who followed a similar trajectory as the former Sunderland goal machine.

"I’m delighted for him," Phillips told Sky Sports. "I’m sure it will have come as a major surprise for him - if I’m being honest, I’m a little bit surprised myself.

"I obviously know him well and he won’t be overawed by the situation, either. He’s a confident lad and he’ll settle in nicely in that environment."

Familiar with the struggles and doubts that Vardy has experienced climbing the rungs of English football, Phillips knows better than anyone.

"He has to remember that two and a half years ago he was in non-league."