Gary Lineker suggested Emma Hayes should take over at Leicester after Foxes’ relegation last season… praising her abilities as well as the ‘massive PR opportunity’ of hiring the Chelsea head coach
- Lineker lobbied the board however the thought was seen as ‘a step too far’ by the Foxes
- The aspect have loved a quick begin in the Championship beneath Enzo Maresca
- Listen to the newest episode of Mail Sport’s podcast ‘It’s All Kicking Off!’
Gary Lineker suggested Chelsea Women’s coach Emma Hayes to the Leicester board to take over the relegated membership at the finish of last season.
The former participant and long-time Foxes fan maintains sturdy ties to the membership, who fell again all the way down to the Championship for the first time since promotion in 2014.
Leicester sacked Brendan Rodgers after a run of poor ends in April, appointing former Aston Villa head coach Dean Smith on an interim foundation with the hopes of steering the membership to security.
But Smith was unable to drag off an incredible escape from the relegation zone, with the Foxes ending in 18th on simply 34 factors.
The membership later named former Manchester City assistant coach Enzo Maresca forward of the begin of their 2023/24 marketing campaign, however Lineker revealed that he lobbied for one candidate particularly earlier than his appointment.
‘It’s attention-grabbing, I do not know whether or not I advised you earlier than however in the summer time, when Leicester had been searching for a brand new supervisor I truly obtained in contact with the membership with a little bit thought I had,’ Lineker shared on his Rest is Football podcast, ‘which was for them to go for Emma Hayes from Chelsea.
‘She’s nice, completely reputable however think about being the first main soccer membership to have a lady as a coach. It would have introduced huge quantities of publicity, notably at a time when the membership had gone down into the Championship.
‘You’d have offered all of your season tickets. It’s not a stunt at all though it’s in a manner as a result of it will be an enormous PR alternative.
‘They did come again to me and say it is most likely a step too far at this stage.’
Hayes’ towering success with Chelsea – which has seen her win 4 consecutive Women’s Super League titles, and 6 general, as well as 5 FA cups – has seen her linked to a quantity of strikes into teaching males’s soccer.
The 46-year-old has beforehand brushed apart rumoured hyperlinks to AFC Wimbledon and Queens Park Rangers, and was named by fellow Blue Joe Cole as the girls’s coach more than likely to steer a top-flight males’s workforce in 2021.
But Hayes is eager to not see her success with Chelsea diminished to a footnote en path to working with a males’s aspect, and has been fast to reiterate her stance that she is considering solely working with elite athletes – of both gender.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour in August, the storied supervisor acknowledged: ‘It’s the fixed questioning of when am I going into the males’s sport. The girls’s sport is a excessive stage and I work with world-class athletes.
‘I do not imply to speak negatively about any male workforce or male membership however the actuality is I already coach elite gamers and I feel it is necessary to see that in its personal proper as a substitute of it being a stepping stone to one thing.’
When linked with AFC Wimbledon in 2021, Hayes claimed that the link was an ‘insult’ to girls’s soccer, and that the membership ‘could not afford her’, earlier than later clarifying her feedback.
‘I sincerely hope AFC Wimbledon discover the proper candidate for his or her soccer membership,’ Hayes stated at the time.
‘The entire level about them not with the ability to afford me is nothing to do with cash, however all the pieces to do with the undeniable fact that I’m in the finest job in the world.
‘No quantity of cash goes to tempt me away from that.
