Gary Lineker admits making BBC error you probably didn’t spot during England match

Gary Lineker has admitted to making a mistake during England’s drab 1-1 draw with Denmark – but few would have spotted it. Gareth Southgate’s side were harried into making numerous errors during their underwhelming performance against the Danes.

As former Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur striker Lineker was leading the BBC’s coverage of the match alongside Micah Richards, Brentford manager Thomas Frank, and Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand, he admitted that he fluffed in the post-match analysis. Lineker asked Frank for his opinion on Southgate’s recent decisions.

However, the Bees boss was interrupted as they had to cut to Southgate’s post-match interview. When the coverage returned back to the studio, Lineker asked Frank the exact same question he put to him moments earlier. Such was his transition and composure, Richards does not think anybody noticed.

“Something magical happened today on air,” Richards began on The Rest is Football podcast. “It was the fact that you managed to keep your composure in an incident where I would have scrambled.

“Essentially, you were supposed to go to a Gareth Southgate interview, but instead, you went to Thomas Frank to ask him about Gareth.” Lineker confessed he “f***ed up” as he was “supposed to do that after the Gareth Southgate interview”.

Richards added: “My head was scrambled, I was thinking ‘Oh my God’. It was one second in TV world and the TV studio but the viewers at home might not have sensed anything at all. The way you transitioned from one thing to another was impeccable.”

Lineker then likened his mistake to something that occurred with England defender Marc Guehi during the match. The seasoned TV host said: “It was probably like Marc Guehi, who had a brilliant game.

“At one point, he messed up, gave the ball away and he retrieved it, which is fine. Live TV is a bit like that sometimes. I’d forgotten that we were going to do the Southgate interview first.

“I had got it into my head that I was going to ask Thomas about Southgate and his thoughts on his job and stuff like that. Halfway through asking that question Richard (the producer) is going ‘Oh we’ve got to go to Gareth Southgate first’. But it’s fine, it’s live, it’s like when you make mistakes on football pitches. You deal with it.”

When Richards asked how he stops himself from freezing, Lineker replied: “You know what Micah, it’s because I’ve got a lot of experience. I also know that, ultimately, a television is not going to change anyone’s life and no one’s mood, particularly.

“And also, people at home like it if you f*** up. They don’t mind when you make a mistake. The only thing you can never do, and I’ll give this advice to you now, because it will happen to you on live television as it happened to me tonight, is you suddenly go ‘oh s***’. Don’t worry about it.

“Sometimes it’s better to tell people at home, which I did on the way back when I deliberately asked him the same question and perhaps share the fact that you got it wrong.”