![\"England's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0_GettyImages-79033079.jpg\")
<\/p>\nEverton striker Gary Lineker won the Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup finals but recalled he was approached by Barcelona while in Mexico<\/p>\n
England’s hat-trick hero Gary Lineker celebrates after scoring the first of his three goals against Poland at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico(Image: Bob Thomas Sports Photography via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The ECHO\u2019s Christopher Beesley continues his daily series of articles on Everton and the World Cup running throughout the tournament in the United States of America, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n
Gary Lineker revealed that he was \u201ctapped up\u201d by Barcelona while on his way to winning the Golden Boot as top scorer at the 1986 World Cup finals and he blamed Everton\u2019s failure to retain the title that year on his \u201clucky boots\u201d going missing.<\/p>\n
Joining from his local club Leicester City for \u00a3800,000, the former England striker spent a single season at Goodison Park, netting 40 goals in all competitions in 57 matches throughout the 1985\/86 campaign before signing for the Catalan giants in a \u00a32.8million deal.<\/p>\n
Speaking in 2018, Lineker<\/a> told Danny Baker on their podcast Lineker and Baker Behind Closed Doors<\/a>: \u201cI kind of got tapped up by Barcelona when I was at Everton<\/a>. It was around the time of the World Cup.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019d got in touch with the club and the club did tell me and then it went a little bit quiet. I said to my agent, \u2018the World Cup is on now, I can\u2019t have that disturbing me\u2019, so off we went to Mexico.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the way out he said, \u2018they\u2019ve gone really quiet anyway, it doesn’t really look like it\u2019s happening\u2019. They went really quiet after the first two games when I didn\u2019t score and didn\u2019t play very well but then I scored a hat-trick against Poland and then two against Paraguay and I was top-scorer at the World Cup at that particular stage.\u201d<\/p>\n Lineker would go on to extend his tally to six with a consolation strike against Argentina in the quarter-finals after Diego Maradona\u2019s double strike and although the Napoli star would net another brace in the 2-0 semi-final victory against Belgium, he would draw a blank in the 3-2 win over West Germany in the final to ensure he finished on five goals alongside Brazil\u2019s Careca and Spain\u2019s Emilio Butragueno of Spain, one shy of the Everton man.<\/p>\n The interest in Lineker was revived though and he said: \u201cThere were obviously no mobile phones in those days and we were in a little hotel in Monterrey where we were allowed one phone call home per week and could receive one a week from the reception. A call got put through to me and it was from my agent.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018I know you said not to disturb you at all under any circumstances during the World Cup if there\u2019s any interest from any club whatsoever but Barcelona have been on and they\u2019ve basically said you\u2019ve got to agree to sign now or they\u2019re going to walk away. I don\u2019t think it would have been the right thing not to tell you\u2019. I said, \u2018well, go back to tell them, if they want me now, they\u2019ll want me at the end of the World Cup \u2013 it\u2019s too important\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n The Everton and the World Cup series sees Christopher Beesley writing about the Blues’ links with the tournament throughout the 2026 finals<\/p>\n Lineker also blamed Everton missing out on the League Championship that year on his \u201clucky boots\u201d being mysteriously absent for a crucial game in the title run-in at the Manor Ground only for them to be fixed up again in time for the World Cup. Howard Kendall’s<\/a> side won the league in both 1985 and 1987 but were edged out for top spot by neighbours Liverpool that year \u2013 who would also go on to beat them 3-1 in the FA Cup<\/a> final and secure the double.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI had a pair of lucky boots. I used to go through several pairs a season but I couldn’t stop scoring \u2013 it was like a goal a game building up to the World Cup in 1986, I was knocking them in for fun.<\/p>\n \u201cI was at Everton and we were top of the league. There were three games left: It was Oxford away then we had to play Southampton at home and West Ham at home to finish.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were just ahead of Liverpool but we had to win all three to guarantee winning the league. We played at Oxford and we arrived and the skip came full of the boots and my lucky boots weren\u2019t in it.\u201d<\/p>\n Lineker added: \u201cI\u2019d scored a goal a game but I had to borrow someone\u2019s boots, they were a size too big and I can\u2019t remember whose they were, and I missed two or three really good chances and we lost 1-0 and it cost us the league title. I got my boots back for the next game and scored a hat-trick against Southampton and two in the last match with West Ham to finish with 30 league goals for the season.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were now absolutely knackered these boots with holes in them and everything, so I sent them off to Adidas and they fixed them for me for the World Cup. They patched them together and I won the Golden Boot.<\/p>\n \u201cEven during the World Cup they fell apart again but we had them sent off and specially repaired again and they\u2019re now in the Adidas museum in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n Today\u2019s games \u2013 Quarter-finals: Norway v England, 10pm, Miami; Argentina v Switzerland, 2am Sunday, Kansas City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everton striker Gary Lineker won the Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup finals but recalled he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2689,2855,59,101,56,54,55,6526],"class_list":["post-685659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-everton-fc","tag-gary-lineker","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0_EFCWC.jpg\")
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