Gary Lineker called out England's performance for precisely what it was. Whining Harry Kane's drivel is the real issue here, writes IAN HERBERT

By Ian Herbert

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Yes, of course, Gary Lineker spoke accurately when he said that journalists had extracted leverage from his description of England as ‘s***’, in a press conference with Harry Kane to discuss the performance against Denmark.

It’s a process which occurs almost every week and it oils the wheels of football’s contemporary ecosystem. Sometime, managers want a means to vent about what they’ve seen emanating from the TV studios and we are that vessel. 

It’s been a way of Guardiola leaving something on Carragher, of Klopp letting Keane have it and Ten Hag giving it back in spades to anyone who’d ever carried a microphone, after Manchester United won the FA Cup. 


The studio comments will always shape the questions. The broadcast producers want this. Controversy means profile means ratings. Football is an angry world these days.

Lineker spoke on his ‘Rest is Football’ podcast of ‘journalists being what journalists are,’ and how they ‘can be a bit tricky on these things, trying to wind up footballers.’ 

England have put in underwhelming performances in their first two Euro 2024 group games

It has led to Gareth Southgate's side being heavily criticised from all angles over recent days

This included Gary Lineker, who labelled England's display in their draw with Denmark as 's***' 

Slightly irritating, because of the distinct air of superiority, there. That ‘us and them’ you can get in the higher reaches of football, rooted in the sense that those who report and write are an inferior species because they’ve not played the hallowed game and are not the keeper of the keys.

Football journalists have different skills, not inferior ones, which expose the machinations that the rich and powerful would rather wish you didn’t know about.

The clandestine moves to create European Super League. Manchester City’s legal pursuit of unlimited spending. Almost any transfer you care to mention. Fuel for subsequent studio discussion. More oil for that contemporary ecosystem.

But I’m struggling to muster much anger over Lineker’s ‘journalists being what journalists are.’ In part, it’s because I like him and his work and consider Match of the Day to be a shadow of its usual strength when he doesn’t appear on it. 

There was a sense of how the flagship would be without his presence when he was absent through illness, one week in February. No anchor comes remotely close. BBC Sport will be a more impoverished place if his contract is not renewed, a year or so from now.

But Harry Kane came out swinging and took umbrage with the criticism of his team, with Lineker subsequently blaming journalists for creating a spat with him and England's stars

Yet Lineker called England’s performance last week against Denmark for precisely what it was

The myriad other Lineker controversies? I don’t care. Life’s short. Speak your mind. I don’t subscribe to the ‘stick to football’ argument. I also find it hard to fulminate when Lineker called England’s performance last week – and Kane’s, as an integral part of it – for precisely what it was.

Kane’s principal objections to the criticism were, to paraphrase his drivel, that everyone is under pressure because England have won nothing for years, that the young players aren’t used to this, that it’s very hard to avoid exposure to it, and that ex-players ‘have a responsibility’ to be nice.

Excuse me? England’s highly renumerated, immensely coached stars – supposedly a golden generation this time – sleepwalk their way around a football field for 90 minutes and Kane has the temerity to surface a few days later and pronounce that their, youth, fragility and the weight of history renders the criticism unfair? Well, God help us if they reach a quarter final.

Where along the road did we reach this place where anyone publicly criticising England during a tournament is somehow deemed disloyal or unpatriotic, by the way? We wear these media accreditations to offer a critique. Lineker and Shearer should no more be cheerleaders than we are.

Other British players have demonstrated that speaking like an AI bot is not the only stock response when your team has performed poorly. The restored public optimism preceding Scotland’s second match of the tournament was, in part, a consequence of Andy Robertson speaking from the heart about the ‘fear’ his side had struggled with against the Germans.

Whining Harry Kane's drivel is the real issue here rather than Lineker's honest criticism

Where along the road did we reach this strange place where anyone publicly criticising England during a tournament is somehow deemed disloyal or unpatriotic, by the way? 

It was a long way from the whining of Kane, to whom England supporters looked for a sign of optimism and a hint of direction. It was apparently too much to think that the 30-year-old England captain might have accounted, with some genuine depth and intelligence, for a desperate performance and offered some rationale. Demonstrating in the process that this was rather more than a player undertaking media duties.

Someone might want to point out to Kane that a scintilla of humour can do wonders at a time like this. It was the commodity Jack Grealish reached for when Graeme Souness had argued in these pages, the season before last, that he had not improved following his move to Manchester City from Aston Villa. A night out with Grealish would be good, Souness had observed in passing.

‘Let’s do it,’ Grealish tweeted. ‘As long as I can bring Pogba as a +1!’ Grealish, a free and unencumbered soul, would be such an excellent man for this England campaign, you feel. But that’s another story.

 

Mbappe should be celebrated for political stance 

There was a substantial level of objection to my contention that Kylian Mbappe should be celebrated for urging the young, for whom he is a god in France, to exercise their democratic right to keep out the successor organisation to the National Front. 

My colleague Robert Hardman’s essay from Paris on Saturday provided a chilling insight into how that flank works in France and how those on the extreme manoeuvre their way in by stealth and democratic means. 

They have found a young, clean-cut, expressionless young figurehead president, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, on whom to hang their policies. ‘A Cyborg,’ as some are calling him. A Trojan Horse for the Le Pen policies.

I visited Cologne’s former Gestapo headquarters last week, where the downstairs prison cells are preserved in aspic, right down to the messages their Godforsaken prisoners carved into the walls. Some died in that place. 

On the building’s ground floor, an exhibition relates in painstaking detail the story of how Hitler came to power. By stealth and democratic means. I make no apology for applauding Mbappe’s determination to help keep the far right out.

Kylian Mbappe should be applauded for encouraging young French people to go out and vote

 

Football anthems bring cultures together

Wonderful how the casually constructed football anthems can become something bigger and part of a broader culture. 

When a saxophonist blasted out Freed from Desire in the heat of Dusseldorf’s Berliner Allee on Monday, a couple of Albanians struck up a rendition of ‘Will Grigg’s on fire.’ 

The sax man was an operator, though the Albanians looked through him like he wasn’t there when he shook his cash tin. The busker’s lot.

When a saxophonist blasted out Freed from Desire in the heat of Dusseldorf’s Berliner Allee on Monday, a couple of Albanian supporters struck up a rendition of ‘Will Grigg’s on fire'

 

Clarke needed to cheer up 

In manager Steve Clarke’s press conference melee after Scotland’s draw against the Swiss – their tournament high point – an excellent and much valued colleague inadvertently identified himself as ‘Steve Clarke.’ 

It was a blessing in disguise, lightening the mood during an encounter in which the man himself was steadfastly dour, despite the hard-fought point out on the pitch.

The Scottish travelling contingent have been a joy but couldn’t Clarke have at least cheered up a bit. It’s been the Euros. It could have been the time of his life.

Scotland boss Steve Clarke was steadfastly dour in his dealings with the press at Euro 2024

Gary LinekerHarry KaneEuro 2024