LINEKER’S REIGN IN SPAIN
How Barca star tore Real apart with brilliant hat-trick in 1987 El Clasico
GARY LINEKER remembers El Clasico as a lightbulb moment in his career.
He said: “You hear top sportsmen say, ‘You need that belief in yourself’, but I was never like that.
“I had ambition and drive, I always wanted to be the top scorer, but confidence is a different thing.
“Everything I did surprised me. I never thought I had a chance to get as high as I did.”
By his late-20s Lineker had topped the
First Division scoring charts with Leicester and Everton and was leading scorer at the 1986 World Cup. It persuaded Barcelona to splash out £2.8million to take him to Spain.
That move made the son of a Leicester market trader the second most expensive footballer in the world, behind Diego Maradona.
Lineker says he owes his success to the manager who gave him his chance at Leicester, the late Jock Wallace.
“Jock told me, ‘You have one chance, this is a magnificent sport, give yourself the best possible chance to succeed’.
“I was so terrified of letting him down that I didn’t let myself down.”
Lineker did not let anyone down at the Nou Camp in January 1987, putting the ball in Real Madrid’s net twice in the opening five minutes of El Clasico.
Only two minutes into the match, he squeezed between a defender and keeper Paco Buyo to steer Victor Munoz’s cross into the net. And he guessed where the ball was heading, three minutes later, when Luis Carrasco took aim with a fierce, angled shot.
Buyo couldn’t hang on to it and there was Lineker at the far post, perfectly placed to net the rebound.
Two minutes after the restart, Lineker had his hat-trick for Terry
Venables’ side. Jorge Valdano and Hugo Sanchez pulled goals back, but Barca held on and weeks later, Lineker was England’s hero in a 4-2 win over Spain.
He recalled: “I scored four against Spain at the Bernabeu a few weeks after I scored a hat-trick in El Clasico. After the fourth against Spain, I said to Bryan Robson, ‘Why am I so lucky?’
“He just looked at me and said, ‘F*** off ’.”