Gary Lineker has stood by his comments last summer where he called England "s***". The BBC anchor was in Germany to hosted the corporation's coverage of the Euros and had to sit through some poor performances from the Three Lions. They drew two of their three group games, scoring just twice despite the attacking talent they had at their disposal. It was after the 1-1 with Denmark that Lineker was particularly critical. England had surrendered a 1-0 lead and were holding on towards the end of the contest. On his own The Rest is Football podcast, he said: “I can’t imagine anybody that is English that would have enjoyed England’s performance. Because it was lethargic. It was dour. I mean, you can think of all sorts of words and expletives, if you like, but it was ***-.”.

It resulted in England's skipper Harry Kane taking a swipe back at Lineker and co-host Alan Shearer over their criticism, but he's come out again and reinforced the level of his criticism. He told The Sunday Times: “If I’d said the word ‘poor’ it wouldn’t have [been accurate] – and it was s***. I mean, people get hung up over a swear word. It’s just four letters in a different order to other words. Like ‘this’.

“But, yeah, I didn’t feel anything at the time. I’d just said whatever I thought. I mean, God we were awful in those early games. [On a podcast] you can’t pretend. You can’t say, ‘Oh, actually they weren’t that bad’. You’ve just got to be honest – and we do it in a fair way. I met many of the players subsequently and they all absolutely agreed. Hahaha.”. England, despite consistently underperforming, would make the final in Berlin. That was despite going a goal down in all three of their knockout games en route, before eventually losing out to Spain. Gareth Southgate's competitive record was stellar and he added another final to his CV, but Lineker maintained all was not well with his reign coming to an end.

He added: “I haven’t seen Gareth since, but Gareth was brilliant for England. He took us to two finals, a semi and a quarter in four tournaments. Admittedly, by the end, we’ve got an incredible plethora of talent. But, you know, Gareth’s a defensive coach. There’s nothing wrong with that. “I just think the team probably outgrew him in the end. They didn’t quite reach their absolute potential, but they were still young. But Gareth’s been amazing and more important is how he reconnected the national team with the people. That’s really important. We were in absolute turmoil when he took over. A mess. But there was something wrong in the summer. I couldn’t understand what it was myself.”.

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