Despite his successful 25-year tenure as host of Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday, Jeff Stelling admitted that he longer watches the show for one reason
Jeff Stelling revealed that his decision to no longer watch Soccer Saturday is because he doesn’t want to criticise the show he hosted for 25 years.
The television presenter left his role on the Sky Sports show at the end of the 2022/23 season which put an end to his 31-year association with the broadcaster.
His decision to depart the show came three years after the axing of his long-time colleagues Phil Thompson, Charlie Nicholas, and Matt Le Tissier. Simon Thomas has since succeeded Stelling as host while the rest of the panel is rotated with the likes of Paul Merson, Michael Dawson, Clinton Morrison, Kris Boyd, Sue Smith, and more.
Stelling, who now works for talkSPORT and hosts the YouTube channel ‘Football’s Greatest, has opened up about what he hears most from the public regarding Soccer Saturday before explaining why he’s no longer a viewer of the show.
“In the time since I have left Sky I still hear the cries of ‘Un-believable Jeff!’ from passers-by and black-cab drivers,” he writes in his autobiography Saturday Afternoon Fever. “But often it is now accompanied with ‘It isn’t the same anymore, Jeff’. That saddens me as that was never my intention when I left Soccer Saturday.
“I won’t lie. I no longer watch the show that was my life for almost three decades. Not because I feel any ill-will. Just the opposite. I have many friends working on the programme and I am desperate for it to succeed.
“But if I watched, I know that as an opinionated little so-and-so I would sit and criticise which would benefit no one. Instead, I would rather celebrate nearly thirty years of doing the best job in the world.
“I am lucky that so many people believe there is life in this old dog yet and have offered me projects. Not many people are still learning about and enjoying new roles at my age.”
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The deciding factor in Stelling’s decision to call time on his Soccer Saturday tenure was down to his health struggles. Talking to The Guardian, he admitted constant challenges to air his views started to result in the decline of his wellbeing.
“Even though I’d been there a long time, I felt some of my views weren’t considered at all. Every week I was fighting a battle. I got tired of fighting and it was making me ill. Eventually, I went to Sky’s management and said: ‘This is making me unwell. I’ve got to step away from it.’
“I’m almost ashamed to say it because my dad worked in a steelworks and would come back from his shift covered in grime and muck and absolutely exhausted. He would never have allowed me to say I was shattered after a TV show. But I felt it was making me ill so I had to step away.”
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Saturday Afternoon Fever by Jeff Stelling (Headline, £22)
