Gary Lineker never really thought he was much of a footballer until a fortnight in Spain changed everything. The way he tells his story, it happened both suddenly and in slow motion: 34 years on he sees himself watching the ball drop into the net, wondering what was going on. It was the last day of January 1987 and he had just scored his third against Real Madrid at the Camp Nou, the first clásico hat-trick in 24 years. Eighteen days later, he got four against Spain at the Bernabéu. “And that,” he says, “is when it dawned on me that I was good at this.”
Hang on a minute. You had just been the first division’s top scorer for the second year running. You had scored in the FA Cup final. You had joined Barcelona for £2.8m. Only one player had cost more and that was Diego Maradona. Oh, and you had won the World Cup Golden Boot. “Yeah,” Lineker says, “but I thought I’d fluked it: I’d got lots of tap-ins.” There is no grin or giggle, no irony nor false modesty. Which is why when it’s suggested that 1986 was the perfect year in football, he replies: “Maybe if you include the first two months of 1987, if we go February to February.”
All that and it wasn’t until then that everything fell into place. There is so much to take from a long conversation over five sometimes improvised locations in Madrid one Friday night – from hotel rooftop to bus to bar to stairs to restaurant – as Lineker looks back on his career but the most striking might be that he didn’t anticipate it happening at all. This city changed things.
“I used to think every level I got to they’d find me out, although I kept scoring goals. When I got two in the first five minutes of the 1987 clásico, the mental process was: ‘How the hell is this happening?’ Just after half-time, I dinked it over Paco Buyo. I can see it going in and I’m going: ‘Oh my God, I’ve scored a hat-trick.’ Then came England. Running back to the centre, asking Bryan Robson: ‘Robbo, why am I so lucky?’ He went: ‘Oh, fuck off.’ You hear players say how super-confident they were. I wasn’t. I was getting away with it, I thought I was blagging it.
“At Leicester I played in the reserves with heroes of mine and thought: ‘This isn’t me.’ I got in the first team, started scoring and thought: ‘Oh.’ When I got called up for England, Gordon Milne phoned and I thought: ‘What have I done?’ I said: ‘Er, hi boss, everything OK?’ ‘Yeah, get a bag, pack a toothbrush. Bobby Robson’s been on.’ I’m in my little Fiat driving to England thinking: ‘Bloody hell. Tony Woodcock, Peter Shilton, Trevor Francis … What am I doing here?’ They were all lovely.”
If Lineker couldn’t work out why this was happening, he had worked out how to score goals – a craft he dissects in forensic detail. “Instinct? It’s not instinct with me. What I did have was a cool head. I was quite cold, didn’t have much empathy – I don’t think I would have warmed to me then – I was driven, could deal with pressure and thought about the game a lot.”
He never thought about going to Barcelona until it was done and even then he wasn’t sure, despite Terry Venables being manager – and no coach would be closer in his career. “Everton was the best team I played for by miles. But for the ban we would have probably won the European Cup because we were such a good side,” Lineker says. “I had no choice. Howard Kendall called: ‘We’ve accepted an offer.’ ‘Oh, OK.’ It was all a bit strange. He said we were too direct which was nonsense. I would have stayed and won loads.”
