August 8 – Links Fills Des’s Shoes

GARY LINEKER is described as ‘Leicester’s favourite son,’ although to be fair, there aren’t many others to choose from. Emile Heskey? Do me a favour. Playwright Joe Orton? Now you’re just being obtuse.

Lineker it is then, and it was on this day in 1999 that Old Big Ears was announced as the new full time presenter of Match of the Day, following housewives’ favourite Des Lynam’s defection to ITV.

Perma-tanned Lineker had been back up for Des on MotD for some time, and had also been presenting Football Focus and doing radio work on BBC Five Live, so the flagship highlights programme was the natural progression for him.

Golfer Gary actually started his broadcasting career way back at the 1986 world cup. After England had been knocked out, he joined the BBC pundit team for the remainder of the competition, in which he became the only Englishman to win the Golden Boot scoring six goals.

In a club career that started at his hometown club Leicester and took in Everton, Barcelona, Tottenham and Japanese side Nagoya Grampus Eight, he famously never received a single booking. Mind you, he never made a tackle either so it’s probably not that surprising.

Tune in tomorrow to see which flamboyant Italian was marauding around Yorkshire a decade ago, but before you go here’s one of Links’ early appearances on MotD when Des was still in charge, with Gary looking like a small boy who’s wearing his dad’s suit jacket…