Gary Lineker

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Born
1960 (65 years old)
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Leicester, England

Position
Forward

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Height
5 ft 10 in (1.78 m)

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Wage Year

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Sport

Soccer

Team
_Retired Soccer

2nd Team

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_No League Soccer

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Description

Gary Winston Lineker OBE (born 30 November 1960) is an English former professional footballer and current sports broadcaster. He is regarded as one of the greatest English strikers. Lineker's media career began with the BBC, where he has presented the flagship football programme Match of the Day since the late 1990s. He has also worked for Al Jazeera Sports, Eredivisie Live, NBC Sports Network and currently hosts BT Sport's coverage of the UEFA Champions League.

Lineker began his football career at Leicester City in 1978, and finished as the First Division's joint top goalscorer in 1984–85. He then moved to league champions Everton where he won both the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards in his debut season, before moving to Spanish giants Barcelona. With Barcelona, he won the 1987-1988 Copa del Rey and the 1989 European Cup Winners' Cup. He joined Tottenham Hotspur in 1989, and won his second FWA Footballer of the Year and won the FA Cup, his first and only major trophy in English football. Lineker's final club was Nagoya Grampus Eight; he retired in 1994 after two seasons at the Japanese side.

Lineker made his England debut in 1984, earning 80 caps and scoring 48 goals over an eight-year international career, and is England's third highest scorer, behind Bobby Charlton and Wayne Rooney. His international goals-to-games ratio remains one of the best for the country, and he holds England's record for goals in the FIFA World Cup, with 10 scored. He was top scorer in the 1986 FIFA World Cup and received the Golden Boot, the only time an Englishman had done so until Harry Kane in the 2018 World Cup. Lineker was integral in England's semi-final feat at the 1990 World Cup, where he scored four goals.

Lineker is also the only player to have been the top scorer in England with three clubs: Leicester City, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur. Notably, he never received a yellow or red card during his 16-year career. As a result, he was honoured in 1990 with the FIFA Fair Play Award. In a senior career which spanned 16 years and 567 competitive games, Lineker scored a total of 330 goals, including 282 goals at club level. After his retirement from football he was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame. A keen supporter of Leicester City, he led a consortium that invested in his old club, saving it from bankruptcy, and was appointed honorary vice-president.

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