Gary Lineker is laughing, remembering the day before England faced Germany many years ago now. He was playing the role of the team bookmaker and the bets were in. What lines, the players asked themselves, would then-manager Bobby Robson use in his prematch team talk? Lineker had scrawled some of them on the giant sheets of paper on the flip-board in the meeting room at the hotel, each with their odds, before folding the first, blank sheet back over the top of them to keep their coach from discovering what they were up to.
The squad didn’t have to wait long for a winner. Long? They didn’t have to wait at all.
Robson went straight to 1966 and to the war, and the room erupted. As the folded-back pages revealed, that had been the favourite, and now everybody was falling about.
That is exactly what the man who won the Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup and got 10 goals across two tournaments, scorer of 48 goals for his country, is doing now. It’s what Lineker does often, in fact, as he looks back over a career in the game and outside it too, and forward to the World Cup that is just a week away.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
ESPN: “Football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and in the end the Germans always win.” Your most famous line is almost Shakespearean.
Lineker: Shakespeare? Oh! Oh, thank you. That Shakespeare of football! [Laughs] I quite like that. There’s your headline. [Laughs] That’s very kind of you but when I said it, I never envisaged that it would become any kind of famous quote. Why would you?! And yet now I get asked about it all the time, especially in Germany.
ESPN: Would you have not done it if you had realised how big it would become, how it would end up following you around?
Lineker: No. I would definitely have done it! [Laughs] It’s really nice that people remember me for that and it’s not like it’s a line where I have let myself down. It’s a quote that didn’t feel particularly clever at the time — a bit like most of my tweets. Like the tweets, it’s just like trying to put a different angle on things, really. But do you know the context? Where it came from? It was just before the ’94 World Cup and Pete Davies was writing a book trying to explain football to Americans and asked me to write the foreword and that’s what I wrote.
ESPN: Just one line?
Lineker: That was it. He just wanted something pithy and short. Or maybe it was something for the cover or something, I’m not so sure now, but that’s where it came from — and it grew from there so someone must have read the book.
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ESPN: Do you still believe that?
Lineker: It was obviously half a joke because they don’t win every World Cup, but it’s always a possibility. This World Cup there is no obvious favourite.
France either win it or implode. They have issues: Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kante, injured. Kylian Mbappe and who he is falling out with next. After that, Germany will have to have a chance, although goal-scoring-wise they have not got [a striker], but then France have won a World cup without a centre-forward. Spain? A work in progress, they’re young but I thought they were great in the Euros so they have got to have a chance. England have got a chance but are a bit short at the back. The two South Americans have looked probably the strongest of anyone but a South American team haven’t won it for 20 years. It’s really open.
ESPN: If that line was half a joke, that means it was half serious …
Lineker: Well it was half serious because it was after 1990, so it was slightly personal. [Laughs]
ESPN: What do you remember from the semifinal in 1990?
Lineker: That game was one of the best games we have had with England in a World Cup. We ran Germany really close. I only watched it back in its entirety a couple of years ago for the first time and actually we played quite well. There wasn’t a lot in it. Germany had a lucky first goal and we had a really brilliantly finished goal. It is one the most remembered games in England, too, because of [Paul Gascoigne]: his card, the tears, the reaction, for everything.
I played really well, actually — I was really surprised [Laughs]. I only ever remember the goals: if I score, it’s great; if I don’t, I don’t [remember]. But actually I held the ball up reasonably well, brought people into the game. I didn’t get many touches, as strikers don’t.
That was a very, very strong Germany side. We came in off the back of two extra-times, we had a day less [to prepare] than Germany, nobody really gave us much of a chance. And even though it was massively disappointing, we left there with our heads held high, not feeling like we had let ourselves down. Not that that makes it feel any better — it does in time, though, especially when you watch it back 30 years later. I watched it with Jurgen Klinsmann. He had a really poor game. [Laughs]
ESPN: Did you tell him that?!
Lineker: He told me. He’s very modest. Des Walker was brilliant on him.
ESPN: Let’s go back to your famous line: what do you make of Germany’s evolution over the last 10 years or so and their failures at major tournaments?
Lineker: I am not the person to say that you can’t win every time! [Laughs] I’m not that person. But it’s true: you can’t always be brilliant. Ultimately it is about players — and obviously, the coaching as well.
Four years ago, Germany played that super high line without any pressure on the ball and a slow-ish defence, and that was a recipe for disaster. You can play that way if you have got a little bit of pace, but if you have got Mats Hummels … then it kind of fell apart. But you’re allowed to have one bad tournament every now and then. Germany have done OK! At the Euros, Germany were a bit unlucky against England. Normally Thomas Muller would have put that [chance] away and we would have been in trouble. I think it just shows that even Germany don’t have a divine right always to win. But I don’t think there is a lot wrong with German football. They’re still producing very good players and will be one of the favourites.
ESPN: But they don’t have a No. 9.
Lineker: Not at the moment, no. If you have got a No. 9, you play one. “False nine” is the excuse when you haven’t got one: if you have not got a top-class centre-forward, you invent, you work a way around it. And that may be what Germany have to do. Kai Havertz: I don’t really know what he is, not quite. I don’t know what his best position is but it’s certainly not a 9. But France have shown you can win a World Cup without a 9. Twice.
ESPN: What about England? They don’t seem to know what they want to do.
Lineker: Not at the moment, and that worries me. Even in the tournaments where we have done reasonably well, it’s like one game it’s five [at the back], then it’s four, and that worries me. In 1986 and 1990, we made changes: we had always been stuck with 4-4-2, which is easy to play against, and suddenly we changed to three centre-backs in 1990 and it was like, “Oh, a bit of freedom here” and it worked. But that’s 20, 30 years ago and I am just looking at how now it seems to me that the elite coaches generally have a way of playing that’s clear. That makes it easier for the players: everyone knows their roles. And I don’t see that with England.
ESPN: Does playing in the winter change things?
Lineker: It’s really hard to predict. It will be interesting to see who it suits, who is fit and fresh and who is not. Germany have always been sensible, they have a winter break in their club football. That’s good sense. A couple of weeks off, another preseason and they get there in good shape; we play Boxing Day, midweek that week, New Year’s Day, and we wonder why our players are not the sharpest when it comes to the summer because the end of the seasons drags on and on and on. Losing that disadvantage this time might help but I do worry about us at the back. I hope that Gareth Southgate plays to our strengths — but I’m not sure he will.
ESPN: Do you have a preference beyond England? Is there someone you would like to see win it?
Lineker: Yes, yes. If England don’t win it, I would love to see Messi win it. I would much prefer to see England win it, of course, but after that, yeah. His career merits it. Not that it would really affect my mood like it would with England. In all honesty, I would be supporting Argentina in the final if England weren’t there. I have met Messi a few times and I am a big fan. He has given me so much pleasure in my post-football playing life watching him week in, week out.
ESPN: Messi and Maradona are very different personalities
Lineker: Oh, totally. One is this huge charismatic figure, a big ego. Messi, I am sure he has got an ego, but he’s quiet. But he’s driven: you can’t do what he has done without that. You need that ego to achieve. And you can see that with Cristiano Ronaldo now: he is struggling to cope with his own ego. He is 37, he is coming to the end and I feel for him a little bit because in his mind and his body, he will still feel like he’s that player he always was and he won’t be able to understand why [he’s not]. But Father Time gets us all in the end, it doesn’t matter who you are. It’s a difficult thing dealing with it.
