NafisaGary Lineker enjoyed a prolific goal-scoring career, but one Nottingham Forest legend always made life difficult for him.
Lineker has been a talking point among Forest fans this season, as Nuno Espirito Santo’s team continues to prove his early-season prediction wrong.
At the start of the campaign, Lineker predicted Forest would be relegated—a statement that has followed him ever since, especially after Forest defeated his former club, Leicester City.
Since then, he has backtracked. First, he admitted he was foolish to predict Forest’s relegation. Later, it was revealed that he only picked Forest to go down because he didn’t want to say Leicester would. This revelation softened the criticism, though not before Forest fans had their fun at his expense.
It turns out Forest has long been a troublesome opponent for Lineker. He once had to come up with a strategic plan to avoid facing a club legend in the 1991 FA Cup final—a defender whose impact left a lasting impression on him.
Gary Lineker’s Plan to Avoid Des Walker in the FA Cup Final
While discussing Espirito Santo’s squad, former Forest great Des Walker singled out Murillo for praise. However, the Brazilian still has a way to go before he instills the same level of fear Walker once did in opposing strikers.
Lineker certainly knew what it was like to go up against Walker. In fact, he went to great lengths to try and avoid being marked by him in the FA Cup final.
He said:
“About three weeks to go before the end of the season, we played a game against Forest at White Hart Lane. […] I went out on the pitch and started playing, and Des Walker wasn’t there – he was playing, but he wasn’t marking me – he [Clough] put Steve Chettle on me.
“This is genuinely true, it is the one game in the entirety of my career where I genuinely did not try a leg – I let him get in front of me, I let him win every ball. […] Anyway, three weeks later, FA Cup final at Wembley – the two teams are in the tunnel and Des Walker looks over to me and says, it worked.
“I thought to myself, ‘hmmm.’ Does he mean what I hope he means? The game starts, and Steve Chettle is on me. […] The first half, I was absolutely flying in the game. I was turning him inside out.
“Then they scored a free-kick at the other end. Despite the fact we battered them, we went in 1-0 down at half-time. We were playing well enough, we were the better team, and Terry Venables said just keep going.
“We come out of the tunnel, and I get a little tap on the shoulder. I looked round and it was Des Walker, and he goes, ‘I’m back!’ So he marked for the rest of the game.”
Des Walker: The Defender Who Gave Lineker Nightmares
Stuart Pearce once named Walker as his favorite Forest player, and it’s easy to see why. Under Brian Clough’s guidance, Walker earned the respect of countless strikers, including Lineker himself.
During The Rest is Football podcast, Lineker spoke about how challenging it was to play against Walker.
He said:
“When I was at Tottenham, we played Nottingham Forest in the [FA Cup] final in 1991. Whenever we played Forest, Cloughie would always put Des Walker on me, man to man.”
“Des was so hard to play against. You know that song, ‘you’ll never beat Des Walker!’ and he was hard to beat when he was on you.
“We won it in extra time with an own goal from Des, which was a shame because I’d have much preferred it if I had scored the goal! But Des was a great guy and a brilliant defender.
“They [Forest fans] used to sing that annoying song all the time when you played against him, ‘You’ll never beat Des Walker!’”
Lineker was so determined to avoid Walker in the 1991 final that he put a clever plan into motion weeks in advance.
Nafisa
