Jamie Vardy dares to dream for both Club and Country

Jamie Vardy made an entire season out of defying conventional wisdom for Leicester City on the club level.

Now, he's trying to take those renegade ways to England's national team.

It's not often that you see a player get his first extended national team look at the age of 29. But that's exactly the situation Vardy finds himself in after he and the Foxes took the English Premier League by storm this season and finished off the most improbable championship run in league history.

Vardy is now in line to play a key role for England ahead of the upcoming Euro 2016 -- with former nemesis and Tottenham Hotspur striker Harry Kane now featuring as his main ally.

As we all know, Vardy was nothing short of magnificent from start to finish for the Foxes in 2016, finishing second only to Kane for the league lead in goals with 24. Now, Vardy and Kane are set to join forces up top for England in a group of attackers that also includes captain Wayne Rooney - who has a cool 51 career national team goals to his name.

That's a potent group - at least on paper - no matter how you slice it. It must be an especially welcome sight for anyone who happens to support England's national team, which has often found itself striker-starved. Kane himself noted the potency of the duo after England's warm-up match with Turkey on Sunday, which saw both Vardy and Kane find the scoresheet to lead England to a 2-1 victory.

"When you have got a pair of strikers who have scored 25 and 24 Premier League goals it shows that we have top strikers,'' Kane said in an interview with ESPN. "We both scored again on Sunday and scoring is a good habit to have. We are up there, we are confident, we are both scoring goals and long may it continue."

Having top strikers is a good place to start. But the issue of exactly how those pieces fit together had been the prevailing question for England ahead of the Euro 2016.

For his part, Hodgson indicated after the Turkey match that he liked the chemistry he saw between Vardy and Kane and that he would likely start with that duo, with Daniel Sturridge taking the role as an impact sub off the bench.

It also seems like this means Rooney will pushed out to the wing instead of playing centrally - a role that the captain will have to adjust to on the fly as England goes through its final tune-ups.

Either way, Vardy's infusion into the national team circuit is yet another breathe of fresh air to come out of Leicester's fairytale season. Here's a guy who didn't even get his first cap until May of last year, when he was 28. Now he's being paired up with the only striker in the EPL who scored more goals than he did last year and is primed to play a key role in a huge international tournament. That's pretty cool.

Exactly how Hodgson chooses to fit Vardy, Kane and Rooney together - and how well the three of them gel - is an issue that remains to be seen, of course. But for now, we'll qualify that as a good problem to have.