Gary Lineker produced a tongue-in-cheek response surrounding criticism of England’s performances at Euro 2024 on Monday night.
Despite maintaining their unbeaten start to the tournament, England have come under fire for lacking an attacking impetus in their draw with Denmark on Thursday.
Lineker was one of several prominent media figures to criticise the showing, branding the performance as ‘s***’ on ‘The Rest is Football’, a podcast he hosts.
A number of England’s star players – including the likes of Harry Kane and Declan Rice – fired back at Lineker, before the pundit produced the tongue-in-cheek comment on Monday.
During BBC One’s coverage of Italy’s draw with Croatia, Lineker said: ‘If Albania fail to win tonight, England are officially through to the last 16.
Gary Lineker produced a tongue-in-cheek response surrounding criticism of England’s performances at Euro 2024, during BBC One’s coverage of Italy’s 1-1 draw with Croatia
The footballer-turned-pundit branded England’s performance ‘s***’ following their 1-1 draw with Denmark
‘Because even if they lose tomorrow they will go through as one of the best third-placed teams. I wish people would stop being so critical of them.’
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The irony being that Lineker has been the loudest critic of England in the past week, despite the Three Lions ensuring their place in the tournament’s last-16 already.
Lineker’s initial comments certainly did not fall upon deaf ears, as a number of the Three Lions squad quickly hit back at the former England international.
Speaking ahead of England’s final group game against Slovenia, Harry Kane offered a response and suggested an ulterior motive behind some of the negative reaction.
Meanwhile, Gareth Southgate insisted that he was ‘oblivious’ to Lineker’s remarks but admitted that he had ‘the one word’ that the BBC pundit uttered in his criticisms.
Kane was quick to hit back at Lineker’s comments ahead of England’s final group stage fixture
Southgate said: ‘I am oblivious to it. It is not important to me at all. What is important to me is I have to guide this set of players confidently through the terrain that is the tournament.
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‘We are a high-profile team and we have expectations and we fully understand everything we do will be scrutinised. I am very comfortable living that life. I don’t need to engage in the external, because I am my own biggest critic and I think our players are as well’.
However, Lineker stood by his criticism of England and, on his podcast, insisted that the journalist who put his comments to the team would have had the same evaluation of their performance.
‘Made the headlines again, haven’t I!’ Lineker said. ‘Journalists being what journalists are.
‘They can be a bit tricky on these things trying to wind up our footballers. We’ve been obviously critical of England’s performance as has pretty much every journalist.
‘But you know what happens Alan, it’s happened to you and it’s happened to me over the years. You sit there as a player and it’s your turn to face the press and at some point a journalist says ‘so and so has been critical of you’ and you know they’ve not heard it.’
‘We’ve talked about this on this podcast before about journalists not being brave enough to ask their own questions.
‘I guarantee whoever asked that would have probably been critical himself. I think they do it A) to stir the pot and B) because they’re too scared to ask the questions themselves.
‘I get it and it puts Harry on the spot, but I thought he answered it fine with one or two bits in there, but it’s not easy answering a question like that.’
