Gary Lineker is a big theatre fan and wants to encourage more football fans into the arts (Picture: Getty)

Gary Lineker is a passionate theatre fan and has insisted more football fans should give live performance a try.

The former player and TV pundit told Metro.co.uk that theatre and football are similar because ‘you never know what you’re going to get’.

Speaking after Patrick Marber’s The Red Lion, a celebrated play about football, Gary said: ‘I’ve always loved theatre and I wish I got into it a lot younger.’

The Red Lion is a football play about the locker room (Picture: Mark Douet)

‘I got really into it, and I go at least once a month to watch plays, so I would thoroughly recommend it. It’s great, I’m sure other players will be the same’.




Gary was first won over by ‘the many similarities’ between football and theatre.

Gary says: ‘You see people working together, it’s entertaining: like football, you never quite know what you’re going to get’.

Watch the trailer for The Red Lion by Patrick Marber.

Acknowledging the challenge of getting bums on seats in theatres, and encouraging new audiences, Gary thinks The Red Lion play is ‘certainly a gateway to footballers and football fans’ to theatre.

Gary Lineker thinks The Red Lion is a good gateway to theatre for football fans (Picture: Getty Images for British Airways)

The play, about the way football affects three men who come at the game from different perspectives, received very good reviews when it opened at the National Theatre in 2015.

When asked what his message to football fans was, Gary said: ‘They don’t listen to me all the time!’ Sometimes you’ll love it, sometimes you’ll hate it, but it’s about experiencing something live.

‘The Red Lion has got messages, it’s got reality and it’s got a great deal of humour’.

A scene from The Red Lion, Trafalgar Studios (Picture: Mark Douet)

Patrick Marber’s play also raises issues about masculinity, and the transparency of the politics that goes on within the locker room.

‘Anything that encourages people to explore issues of equality has to be a good thing,’ Lineker surmised.

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