Gary Lineker - Behind Closed Doors: Life, Laughs and Football

Gary Lineker

Gary Lineker OBE is a broadcaster and a former professional footballer. He holds Englands record for goals in FIFA World C up finals, with 10 scored. He has presented the flagship BBC football programme Match of the Day since the late 1990s. He also hosts BT Sports coverage of the UEFA C hampions League. Follow Gary on Twitter @GaryLineker and on Instagram.

Danny Baker

Danny Baker is an author, comedy writer, journalist and Radio DJ. He currently presents his Saturday morning show on BBC Radio 5 Live and is a regular face on TV. He is the author of the bestselling memoirs Going to Sea in a Sieve, Going Off Alarming and, most recently, Going on the Turn. He still lives in south-east London. Follow Danny on Twitter @prodnose

From Gary: To George, Harry, Tobias and Angus.

From Danny: For Spud & Mickey, the Dockers and the Chaps of Half-Way Line.

GARY

Would a pre-match team-talk be useful to you at this point? A few uplifting words to take with you as you pull on the shirt, tie your boots, perform a few light stretches and generally try to get your head in the right place, ready to go out there and read this book? I ought to be able to help. Ive sat in enough dressing rooms with enough football managers.

So, how about this one, from the late and revered Sir Bobby Robson? The scene is the Estadio Tecnolgico in Monterrey, Mexico. The year is 1986. England are about to face Poland in our third and final match of the World Cup group stage. Thus far things have not exactly been running to plan. Indeed, disaster would be one of the polite words for what has unfolded over this past fortnight in the dripping Mexican heat. We have managed to lose to Portugal and draw with relatively lowly Morocco, while scoring precisely no goals. Meanwhile we have lost our captain, Bryan Robson, to a shoulder injury, and our vice-captain, Ray Wilkins, has been sent off and suspended for the unusual offence of throwing the ball at the referee.

To be fair, the ball didnt actually strike the referee; it arrived at his feet. But it arrived there pretty fast, flung by Ray in frustration after an offside decision that he didnt entirely agree with. And that, in a sense, merely further encapsulates the misery of this particular England campaign: even when we try to hit the referee from ten yards, we miss.

And now we face Poland, who have no reputation for being a pushover and who stand ominously between us and the worst of all World Cup ignominies limping home in shame after the group phase. And, beyond that, the bravely borne but still painfully visible disappointment of our families and friends, the inevitable barracking in the tabloids, the season-long dogs abuse from the stands

Some big words were called for, then, as Sir Bobby stood in front of his pretty demoralised troops something resounding from the man in charge, with all of our reputations on the line, including his own.

Now, you wont find a player who worked under him who didnt respect Sir Bobby Robson and who didnt regard him as a profoundly wise man and a superb human being. But when it came to energising teams through the power of rhetoric alone well, lets just say that even at the best of times Sir Bobby didnt exactly have a reputation for being footballs Martin Luther King. Indeed, it was on the basis of his performances as a pre-match speaker that some of the players had taken to referring to him as Mogadon, in honour of the famous anti-insomnia tablets.

Generally speaking, when you gathered in front of Sir Bobby, you would be in for a lecture long and detailed. Sir Bobbys favourite prop was the flip-chart a giant pad of white paper on a stand which he would patiently prepare beforehand with diagrams and graphs and statistics, covering all eventualities for the game that lay ahead. These he would solemnly work through, turning those pages over, sheet after sheet, while we all sat there, pinching ourselves and trying to prevent sleep from setting in.

This much we all knew in advance, then. Moreover, as is often the case at this stage of a World Cup, the situation in the group, going into that game against Poland, was slightly complicated. A win would see us go through to the knockout rounds, but a draw might also be enough, depending on what happened in the groups other remaining game, which was being played simultaneously. There were permutations, in other words. It was the kind of thing, one realised with sinking spirits, that would lend itself very well to some of Sir Bobbys famous flip-charts.

Yet, that day, in the dressing room, to everybodys surprise, the top page of the flip-chart was blank. Nothing was written on it at all.

Instead, Sir Bobby called for everybodys attention and said: Lads, I could go through all the permutations of the results, but all of that is irrelevant if we do one thing: if we win. Win this match and we go through. Its that simple. Everything thats happened in the tournament up to now? None of that matters if we win. And we can win. I know that you know that. So lets go and do it. Here. Now. Against Poland. Lets smash them. Do it for the country. Turn it all around, make yourselves proud, make the nation proud.

You could feel these words really beginning to get a hold on everyone. Redemption! A rewritten story! And ahead of us a fresh shot at glory. It was brilliant. Nothing complicated. Just a simple, direct appeal to the task in hand. Job done. We were on our feet Terry Fenwick, Peter Reid, Terry Butcher. I could feel the adrenaline tingling in my system. People were shouting come on and clapping and pumping their fists, utterly fired up. We felt unbeatable like there was nobody who could stand in our way, Poland or anybody else for that matter. Let us at them!

And at that point, above the hubbub, rose the voice of Sir Bobby.

But just before you go, lads

The blank sheet was whipped back and below it was the first of a series of further sheets on which Sir Bobby had painstakingly laid out the various alternative scenarios for the group. And these he duly talked us through (Now, ninthly: if our game finishes in a high-scoring draw and Morocco win by two clear goals against Portugal ) as we all gradually sat down again and as the energy left the room like the air from a paddling pool.

Anyway, the point is, thus inspired, and immediately uninspired again, we went out and crushed Poland 30. Frankly, I had been so peripheral and unimpressive in the first two matches that I had been quite surprised to find myself picked for this third one. But this time I scored a hat-trick, to which I added three more in the subsequent two knockout games and (I hope you wont mind me mentioning it) ended up becoming the first England player to win the Golden Boot, given to the tournaments top goal-scorer.

So much for pre-match team-talks, then. Some are good and some are bad, and some, like Sir Bobbys that time, are good at first and then eventually bad and you still might end up getting the result you want. So maybe I wont waste your time by attempting a motivational speech at this point in the book. All the same, without wishing to get out a flip-chart of my own, perhaps I should try to explain the tactics, such as they are, behind the following pages.

These chapters arise from the conversations Danny and I started having on Monday lunchtimes in my kitchen for the Behind Closed Doors podcast. For those who havent heard it, the set-up was a simple one: the two of us would get together in front of a couple of microphones and egg each other on to tell a few stories me from my playing days, Danny from a lifetime of following the game, and both of us from a fair amount of time spent broadcasting about it. Along the way, often prompted by listeners, we would attempt to answer some frequently asked questions such burning issues as, do players ever really hand in a transfer request? Are goalkeepers truly different? And whats it actually like to share a bath with Paul Gascoigne? With me coming at it from the playing side, and Danny from the fans side, we soon found ourselves travelling deep into footballs most intimate recesses. Also, as the tales grew and the topics for discussion mounted up, we quickly realised that we had a surfeit of material. There were whole stories we didnt have time for, and there were other stories that we did have time for but which we were desperate to expand upon and add some flesh to. Hence this book.