Kelly Cates admits lying to football legend dad about getting Match of the Day job
Kelly Cates admits lying to football legend dad about getting Match of the Day job
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New Match of the Day host Kelly Cates had to lie to dad Kenny Dalglish after being handed the illustrious gig. The Sky Sports star has been confirmed as one of the programme’s main anchors for next season as Gary Lineker departs. She will share the role alongside Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan.
And Cates has now opened up on how she was told about her new role - admitting that she couldn’t contain her excitement, while the secrecy of the process meant she had to lie to those closest to her. “When it was first kind of made official, I was on a call with Alex (Kay-Jelski) who is the head of BBC Sport, and I just kept saying to him, ‘I’m so excited, I’m so excited!'” Cates said on the Sports Agents podcast alongside new colleague Chapman.
“And then I realised that he had me on speaker, and several really quite important people were listening to me sounding like a 13-year-old. Not that there’s anything wrong with sounding like a 13-year-old – I’ve got one of my own! But it didn’t feel like the most professional or mature way to deal with it.
“I have learned about myself that I could never have a second life, this time. I could never be – I mean, it was never on the cards for me – but I could never be, for example, a spy. That was never going to be an option for me. I’ve just been barefaced lying to friends, it’s been horrendous.”.
Asked by Chapman if she had told her family including her dad Liverpool legend Dalglish, she replied: “It wasn’t that I couldn’t trust them. I just only told my mum, and that was because, for a lot of the time I just didn’t want extra noise. I just wanted it to be very quiet outside of that kind of the conversation. So, yeah, I just told my mum for a while.”.
