Hall of Fame XVII - Gary Lineker, the “gentleman of the goal” who made anticipation his art
Sometimes a world-class player's art lies in knowing how to hide it. In making what is unnatural look natural, what for others is hugely complicated seem simple. Gary Lineker belonged to this category of champions: no superfluous gestures, no concession to aesthetics for their own sake, never over the top. To excel, he needed only a few metres, often only a few seconds, sometimes just a single touch.
His talent lived above all in what happened before the ball reached him. Lineker watched, sensed, moved. While others reacted to the play, he seemed to have already read how it would unfold. He had the secret of the great penalty-box strikers: a sort of inner clock that ran a few seconds ahead of everyone else's. A quality that was hard to measure and even harder to teach.
In ancient times they would have called it "ars celare artem", or "the art of concealing art", a concept dear to Quintilian. Lineker turned it into something close to a football philosophy. He did not have the devastating power of the great centre-forwards or the acrobatic range of the virtuosos, he did not love dribbling past half a team and he rarely chased the impossible goal. He did something that looked far simpler: he arrived where the ball was going to arrive. Before the defender. Before the goalkeeper. Sometimes even before one of his team-mates had decided to pass it.
For his fairness and the style with which he interpreted the role of centre-forward, he earned the nickname "Gentleman of the goal". Rather than battling with defenders, he always looked to get there first.
Then came the goals: at home, in Spain and even in the final, exotic chapter of his career in Japan. He did it in an England shirt, above all when the stage grew bigger and other players' legs began to tire. Six goals at Mexico '86, four at Italy '90: 10 in total at the World Cup, a milestone no Englishman had ever reached before him.
The greengrocer’s son
Before the world came to recognise that eternally good-lad face and those celebrations that were almost always measured, Gary Winston Lineker was simply the son of a greengrocer from Leicester. Born on 30 November 1960, he grew up helping his father Barry at the city market and split his passions between two deeply English sports: football and cricket.
For a while, it was not at all obvious which of the two would become his future. "I had a happy and peaceful childhood," he would recount many years later to ‘The Observer’. "From the ages of 11 to 16," he would add in an interview with 'The Independent', "I thought I had a better chance in cricket than in football".
Barry got up at four in the morning to reach the wholesale market. There he bought fruit to sell during the day at Leicester Market, and in the evening he returned home to deal with the accounts. Another image stands out most clearly from Lineker’s childhood: him playing football in the garden at home. "My life," he would explain again to ‘The Observer’, "has always been dominated by sport".
At school, though, some doubted Gary could really make that future his own. He did not have the physique of someone marked out for greatness and, when he decided to focus on football, some teachers suggested he think about a safer profession.
Leicester, fortunately, saw something that others did not. They brought him into their youth sector in 1976. Lineker was still only 15, skinny, light, a long way from the striker who would terrorise defences around half the world. But he already had what no gym could ever have given him: a sense of space and time.
In the report for his diploma, which he obtained in 1977, some teachers noted that "the boy concentrates too much on football" and that because of this "he will never earn a living". It was one of those misjudgments sporting history is full of, a verdict that must have seemed reasonable at the time and ended up looking magnificently wrong.
Jock Wallace spotted his footballing qualities more than anyone else and a few years later handed him his first-team debut. "Nobody imagined what was inside that boy," the Scottish manager would tell ‘El País’ in 1986. "He didn’t stand out, you could look at him as much as you liked and he didn’t stand out at all. But I knew he had something: in there was a goalscorer".
His first-team debut came on New Year’s Day in 1979, against Oldham Athletic. The early stages brought nothing dazzling. Lineker had to wait, grow, get stronger and earn his place. Once he did, he started scoring with the regularity that would become his trademark. He helped Leicester return to the top flight and, season after season, the boy from the city market became the idol of Filbert Street.
During the 1983/84 season he scored 22 league goals. The following year he rose to 24 and won the First Division scoring charts together with Kerry Dixon. Leicester could feel him outgrowing the club. His talent needed a bigger stage.
By the time he left the Foxes in the summer of 1985, the tally stood at 103 goals in 216 appearances overall across seven seasons, four played in the Second Division and three in the First Division. Everton won the race for his registration. The Toffees were reigning champions of England and invested around £800,000, equivalent to just under €1 million, to entrust him with the task of taking over Andy Gray’s goalscoring legacy. Lineker responded in the only way he knew. By scoring.
A year to become great
At Liverpool, one season is enough for him to leave a mark that many footballers fail to make in an entire career. He scores 40 goals in 57 appearances in all competitions, 30 of them in the league, and wins the English top-scorer title for the second consecutive year. Everton finish second in the First Division and lose the FA Cup final against Liverpool, but Lineker has now moved definitively beyond the confines of the provinces.
The paradox is that the most prolific season of his English career does not bring him any trophies. It does, however, give him something perhaps even more important: a place among Europe's great strikers.
Meanwhile, Lineker has also started to make England his own. His debut for the national team dates back to 26 May 1984, when Bobby Robson sends him on against Scotland at Hampden Park. He is 23 and has not followed the international path of someone marked out for greatness. Even the Three Lions shirt has to be earned step by step.
His first goal comes the following year and, with his breakthrough between Leicester and Everton, his importance in Robson's team also grows. Lineker heads into the summer of 1986 no longer as an alternative, but as the centre-forward on whom England can build their ambitions. At 25, he is at the height of his footballing maturity. Only one thing is missing: a stage big enough to show the world what England have already started to discover. That stage is the 1986 World Cup, the tournament that will change his international standing for ever.
But England's adventure in Mexico does not begin well. Lineker arrives at the competition with a fractured forearm and Robson's side make a poor start: defeat against Portugal, a goalless draw with Morocco. After two matches, England have one point, no goals and a very real risk of an early exit.
To qualify, they have to beat Poland. Lineker needs only 34 minutes. First he gets on the end of a ball from Gary Stevens and beats the goalkeeper. Then he turns a low Steve Hodge cross into a goal. Finally, he takes advantage of an imperfect intervention from Józef Mlynarczyk and completes the hat-trick that sends England through to the last 16. Those three goals, all scored in one half, propel him among the leading figures of the competition.
Years later, Lineker would choose that hat-trick itself as the finest moment of his two World Cups. "Not because they were great goals," he would clarify to 'Fifa.com'. "I don't think any of mine ever were."
Modesty, after all, was one of Lineker's great virtues. Even when looking back on his own art, he kept trying to hide it. He scores again in that tournament, twice against Paraguay in the last 16, taking his total to five in two matches. In the quarter-finals, though, Argentina are waiting for England. And history is waiting for Lineker.
Gary bows to Maradona
22 June 1986, the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Some matches sit on the calendar. Others, at a certain point, break free from it. Argentina v England is one of them.
Maradona needs only four minutes to give football two images bound for eternity and almost impossible to reconcile. First he fools Peter Shilton with what he himself would christen "the Hand of God". Then comes his masterpiece, "the Goal of the Century": Diego sets off from his own half and turns eleven seconds into a work of art, more than fifty metres, five opponents beaten, Shilton included, and the ball rolled into the empty net. Deception gives way to the sublime. It is a distillation of the "diez" who would make the world fall in love and go on to win that World Cup. And Lineker? He watches it all from the other side of the pitch with little he can do. Years later he would confess to Fifa.com: "For the first time in my career I felt like applauding an opponent’s goal".
Yet that afternoon does not end with the Argentine No 10’s brace. With five minutes left, John Barnes, with whom Gary had built a fine understanding, bursts clear down the left and sends the ball to the far post. Lineker does what he had always done: he arrives. Header, 2-1. Soon after, Barnes puts together an almost identical move and for an instant it feels as if history might grant England one last chance. The Everton striker again throws himself at the cross, but this time it is not enough.
Argentina go through. Maradona wins the World Cup. But there is glory for Lineker too: thanks to that goal against the Albiceleste, Gary finishes as the World Cup’s top scorer, the first Englishman to do so, and wins the Golden Boot. That is the definitive answer to those who, years earlier, had doubted the future in football of that slight boy. As ever, in silence, without great clamour.
Lineker to Barcelona
When the World Cup in Mexico ends, Barcelona are already waiting for him. Terry Venables, English like him, wants him at Camp Nou and the Catalan club pay around £2.8 million, more than €3 million at current value, to bring him to Spain.
The language changes, the climate changes, the football changes. Lineker's habit does not. In his first season in Catalonia he scores 21 goals in all competitions and, above all, bags three in the game that matters more than any other in Barcelona. On 31 January 1987, the 'Clasico' against Real Madrid is played at Camp Nou. Lineker strikes three times and Barca win 3-2. A display that secures his place in blaugrana history.
The marriage with Barcelona lasts three seasons. The Liga title does not arrive, but Lineker lifts a Copa del Rey in 1988 and the Cup Winners' Cup in 1989. His overall record is 52 goals in 138 official matches.
Then the wind changes. Johan Cruijff takes charge of Barca and reshapes the side around his footballing philosophy. Lineker is also used out wide, far from goal and from the spaces where his sense of anticipation makes the difference.
He keeps scoring, but understands that his place, by then, is elsewhere. So in the summer of 1989, the time has simply come for Lineker to go home.
Italia ’90 and the FA Cup at the temple of Wembley
Terry Venables is waiting for him, now in charge of Tottenham. Lineker carries on where he left off: 24 goals in his first league season and another top-scorer title.
Then comes his second World Cup, in the middle of his second life in England. Italia '90 is different from Mexico. Lineker is no longer the surprise name bursting onto the scene. He is the experienced centre-forward in an England side starting to believe they can go all the way.
Against Ireland in the group stage at Cagliari's Sant'Elia, he scores. That same match also brings the most embarrassing moment of his career. Hit by an intestinal problem, he is forced to defecate on the pitch in the second half. He would recount it years later with his customary self-irony: “I tried to go in on an opponent, I strained too much, I relaxed and... mhhhhhh! After it happened I had so much freedom of movement, more than I had ever had during a match. I had never seen defenders mark me from so far away!”
After getting past that mishap as well, the star of the '86 World Cup scores two penalties against Cameroon in the quarter-finals. West Germany await in the semi-final in Turin. Andreas Brehme puts the Germans ahead. Lineker levels it with ten minutes left. It goes to extra time, then penalties.
Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle miss. England finish 12 yards short of the final, with their striker on 4 goals. The dream of being the tournament's top scorer again slips away, but those 10 goals make him the first Englishman to reach double figures at the World Cup.
Out of that defeat came one of the most famous lines ever spoken about football: “Football is a simple game: twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and in the end the Germans win.”
The line became proverbial. The best aphorisms, after all, often need a wound to become universal.
A year later, a title finally arrives at home. Tottenham beat Nottingham Forest 2-1 after extra time in the FA Cup final at Wembley. For Lineker, who does not score in the final and also sees a penalty saved, it marks the end of a spell. For once, he does not have to write the final line himself. Sometimes, to win, it is enough simply to be there.
The following year, his England story also comes to an end
Gary walks off without knowing he will never wear that shirt again. The chase for Charlton ends there: 48 goals in 80 appearances. A haul that still leaves him fourth in England's all-time scoring charts.
The final journey
In 1992, at the age of 31, Lineker picked a destination that for a leading European footballer at the time felt like a step into the unknown: Japan. The Leicester striker signed for Nagoya Grampus Eight and became one of the international faces brought in to help launch the J.League.
His body, though, started to exact the price. Injuries limited his final chapter and in 1994, at 33, the moment came to stop after 23 appearances and nine goals. Lineker walked away from professional football after almost 650 matches for club and England, and more than 300 goals.
Today, beyond the goals, the top-scorer titles and the biggest triumphs, he is often remembered for a number that perhaps tells his story better than any other.
It is zero: zero red cards, zero yellow cards. In an entire professional career. An almost unreal record for a striker who spent 15 years up against opposing defenders, but one that says everything about Gary Lineker's football.
What set the Leicester marksman apart throughout his career was a tiny advantage: a few metres, a few seconds. Enough to beat his opponents, and sometimes even his own team-mates, and score. His art.
