Gary Lineker, former England footballer, has attributed his dispute with Harry Kane over his side’s Euro 2024 performances to journalists. Despite leading in Group C, England faced considerable criticism for their dismal performance in a 1-1 draw with Denmark.
Lineker was among the prominent figures who criticized England’s performance. He labeled their performance ‘s***’ on ‘The Rest is Football’, a podcast he hosts and owns. Meanwhile, Kane urged former players to remember the significance of the shirt they once wore before making hasty comments. However, he reaffirmed his critique of England’s performance while speaking on his podcast alongside Alan Shearer.
“Made the headlines again, haven’t I! 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,” Linekar said.
“I guarantee whoever asked that would have probably been critical himself. I think they do it 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. Imagine we had gone on and said they’d played well – we’d be lying! They didn’t play well and Harry knows that,” he added.
We don’t want to be critical about them, but we have to be sometimes: Alan Shearer
Alan Shearer concurred with his co-host Gary Lineker’s critique, adding he has no issue with Harry Kane’s response. He emphasized their shared enthusiasm for the England team, adding the need of constructive criticism at times.
“There’s one bit there where I understand. He’s (Harry Kane) absolutely right. I will say one thing: The last thing in the world we want to be is downbeat and critical. We want the England team to play well on the pitch and the best punditry of all is when England play well, we’re excited and we’re enthusiastic about them. We say this performance was great and this performance was great. We don’t want to be critical about them, but we have to be sometimes. We did it balanced as well,” Shearer said.
He added that both England and Kane now have the opportunity to respond on the pitch when they play Slovenia. He also stood by his criticism, noting England performed incompetently against Denmark.
“I think the simplest and easiest thing is, did England play well in that game against Denmark? No. They were terrible. So we have to say that. If they’re brilliant, we’ll say they’re brilliant. You know what though, as a player, you always get the right of reply on the pitch. The England team hasn’t played well other than the first 35 minutes of the first game against Serbia. I have no problem with what [Kane] said and I wouldn’t take back anything we said – England were really poor,” he added.
