Jamie Vardy used to show up drunk to Leicester City training sessions, Foxes vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha revealed.
The striker has scored 22 goals this season, and was named the Football Writers' Association (FWA) Footballer of the Year on Monday, after leading his team to an improbable Premier League title.
The 29-year-old was playing in the Conference Premier League for Fleetwood Town just four years ago, before ing Leicester for a non-league transfer record of 1.26 million euros.
Moving up three levels of the English football league system was a difficult transition, and Vardy soon began drinking to deal with the pressure.
"He went straight from the bottom to the Championship, which eventually led him to start drinking booze every single day," Srivaddhanaprabha told the Sun.
"We had no idea what to do."
The vice-chairman said that a conversation he had with Vardy helped turn things around.
"I went to talk to him myself, and I asked 'do you wish to end your career like this? Do you want to stay here like this?"
"He said he didn't know what to do with his life, he'd never earned such a large amount of money.
"So I asked him 'What's your dream? How do you think your life should be? Just think carefully about what you'd do for the club.
"I invested in you, do you have something in return?
"After that, he simply quit drinking and started working hard in training."
Club chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha said that the g has turned out better than the team could have hoped.
"We know he had explosive acceleration, but we simply had no idea he could be this good."