“He was very cold.”
Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker has lifted the lid on his secret beef with former Premier League winning manager Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho has had several stints in the Premier League, managing Chelsea twice, then Manchester United, before finishing his time in England with Tottenham Hotspur.
During this time he has had a turbulent relationship with the British press, as he would sometimes be charming and enthusiastic, but on other occasions, he could be very sharp and cold with the media.
Lineker revealed on the latest episode his podcast, The Rest is Football, that their own relationship soured through the years.
“I remember when he first came [to the UK], he was this incredible personality, really engaging and I thought he was witty and he was funny,” Lineker explained.
“I think the game has beaten him up a little over the years. I did a little documentary with him, he used to text me all the time, he used to text me after Match of the Day, saying ‘you guys understand it, this is great.’
“We had been going along like that for two years and then something changed.
“‘I was asked to present him with the Man of the Year award at the GQ Awards that they do every year. They asked me to present the trophy and I said ‘yes, I’ll do that for Jose, of course’.”
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With four days to go until the event, Lineker then received word that Mourinho wanted someone outside of the football word to hand him the gong.
“Then about four days before the event, they got in touch and said “Jose has got in touch and he doesn’t want you to present the trophy to him, he wants someone that’s not in football”, Lineker continued.
“I thought ‘hmm, that’s a bit odd’ but I thought I’ll go along to the event anyway and I went up to Jose and he kind of blanked me. I went ‘are we ok, are we ok Jose?’
“He went “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But he wasn’t okay and he’s never been okay since.
“I do not know to this day whether it was something I said on Match of the Day, I genuinely have no idea. I interviewed him subsequently and he was very cold.’”
Related links:
- BBC remove Wayne Rooney tweet after Gary Lineker tells them to ‘delete this’
- Gary Lineker on the Ireland star he “used to hate playing against”
- Jose Mourinho set to sign Ireland U19 star from Inter Milan
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