Gary Lineker: ‘Southgate has earned the right to succeed or fail in Qatar’
“England can win it,” says Gary Lineker of this year’s World Cup. “We need luck, we need breaks, we need all our players to find their form but we’ve got a lot of exciting young players. I think we’ll be competitive and I think we’ll be competitive in every tournament we play now. In fact, I think we’re going to have fun with England for the next 10, 12 years.”
Lineker remains the ultimate football enthusiast. To talk with the 61year-old about an event he describes as “the biggest thing going” is to rekindle an unfamiliar feeling, that of excitement for a tournament that has given off more bad vibes than it is possible to count. He uses language stronger than the Guardian will publish to describe the process that ended with Qatar becoming host, says “we are stuck with it” and promises the BBC’s opening night of coverage will be akin to “a mini-Panorama”. But he is supportive of Gareth Southgate, excited for Lionel Messi and ready to back Brazil.
That Lineker has reasons to retain affection for Fifa’s quadrennial jamboree is self-evident: he is indelibly associated with some of the tournament’s most abiding moments. His hat-trick in Monterrey against Poland and the odds, the hand of God and the greatest goal of all time (he scored the consolation), the Golden Boot and a reprisal of that form four years later to take England to the edge of a World Cup final – “have a word” and all; it adds up. Lineker has done as much for the World Cup as it has done for him which, he acknowledges, is a lot.
“Finishing with the Golden Boot in Mexico, six goals, top scorer, it changed my life,” he says. “I was having a decent career, I was scoring lots of goals for first Leicester and then Everton, but to do it in the World Cup catapults you onto a global stage. From being only recognised in a few places in England I was now known everywhere I went.”
If 86 was personally transformative, Italia 90 went further becoming a “watershed moment” for football in this country, he says. “Politically it was a really difficult time for the country: there was concerns over hooligans travelling, Thatcher was talking about whether we should go or not. But we went and I think we then changed the perception of the sport. It wasn’t just a working man’s sport any more. Women were starting to get interested in football, the middle classes were starting to get interested in football, it was perhaps the seminal moment. After that we had the Taylor Report, then along came the Premier League and all of a sudden football was a better place.”
Twenty-eight years later and another transference of energy from an England football team to the country at large occurred. After decades of disappointment, decadence and, ultimately, disconnect, Gareth Southgate led England’s men’s team to their third World Cup semi-final with a group that lacked stardust but won the affection of supporters. This, in turn, led to the England coach and his players becoming more engaged in the national conversation than the generations that had preceded them. They spoke about things that mattered to them and made the case for change. Their decision to take the knee before matches at 2021’s European Championship saw them win the moral argument for protesting against racial inequality over the government of the day.
Players’ advocacy has consistently been met with criticism, and now the same individuals are under pressure to protest against the World Cup in Qatar. Lineker, whose political interventions on Twitter have earned him an army of critics, understands the bind they are in.
“Players that speak out will be told to stick to football, players that don’t speak out will be told to speak out,” he says. “You can’t generally win as a footballer in these circumstances and a lot is expected of what are very young men. They earn huge amounts of money these days and often people don’t like that, but nobody seems to say anything about singers or F1 drivers. Most of the players around the England squad – Gareth is great around this as well – they do say the right things and I think they’ve represented our country really well.”
Lineker has occasionally – and notably – been known to show the edge of his tongue towards Southgate, being critical of the England manager’s conservative approach to tournament competition. After a 1-0 Nations League defeat by Italy in September, he tweeted: “I think Gareth Southgate’s tactical master plan of not giving us any hope in order not to kill us is working beautifully thus far.”
In person, the BBC man and cohost with Cesc Fàbregasof a new World Cup podcast is more diplomatic and makes sure to be clear as to what he deems to be the baseline when it comes to the England manager. “I’ve put my views in there,” he says, “[but] I’m a strong supporter of Gareth and I think whatever happens he has absolutely earned the right to succeed or fail in this World Cup. He’s taken us to a semi-final of the World Cup, a final of the European championships. I would play more adventurously because I’m a striker, [but] history tells us that you probably need a degree of pragmatism to win the World Cup. I understand completely how difficult and thankless a task he’s got … unless he wins the thing.”
Lineker’s favourites for the tournament are Brazil, both the most successful World Cup nation and a country that hasn’t seen success for two decades. “It’s been 20 years since a South American team won the World Cup and if you asked me to put my head on the block and say you’ve to pick someone I think I’d probably pick Brazil, slightly ahead of Argentina,” he says.
The logic of a stacked squad leads him to plump for the Seleção, ahead of the individual genius of the man he calls the GOAT, Lionel Messi. The admiration Lineker has for his fellow sporting great is charming and another marker of his boy scout enthusiasm. Lineker says the 35-year-old doesn’t need a World Cup title to prove his greatness, but then “it would probably put any argument anyone has ever had to bed” so, “in that sense, probably he does”.
Messi is in great form with PSG and playing in a system that suits him under Lionel Scaloni for Argentina, and Lineker says a desert triumph for the diminutive No 10 would be a fitting accolade late in his career. But as someone who has been there and been witness to much more World Cup history, Lineker is aware of the fine lines between sporting death and glory.
“People talk about how Maradona must be better because he won the World Cup; well, I don’t think that’s quite the way you should judge things,” Lineker says. “For example Maradona sticks Burruchaga through against Germany late on, Burruchaga finishes [the third goal in Argentina’s 3-2 victory in the 86 final]. Messi sticks through Higuaín, he goes through, misses [against Germany in a 1-0 final defeat in 2014]. If Higuaín scores that, the debate is already gone. What I’m trying to say is: the greatest player in the world still needs a team.”