5 footballers who never believed in training

#2 Gary Lineker

Glenn Hoddle and Gary Lineker England circa 1986

Gary Lineker was a prolific striker at club level and with the England national team, where he was a missed penalty away from equalling Sir Bobby Charlton’s then-record of 49 goals, but he achieved all that he did despite a well-known dislike of training.

As Harry Redknapp recalled in his book A Man Walks On To a Pitch: Stories from a Life in Football: “It is amusing to see Gary looking so fit now because during his peak years as a player his aversion to practice sessions was famous throughout football. He was a terrible trainer. He just liked to come in on Saturday and play.”

Lineker always said that he didn’t like to train because he preferred to save any good fortune in front of goal for the matches themselves. But Redknapp believes it was actually because his striking technique wasn’t particularly well-refined. In that interpretation, it was the embarrassment of performing shooting drills in front of his teammates that accounted for Lineker’s hatred of training.