What better place to meet Matt Le Tissier than The Dell pub at St Mary’s? As I arrive, the man who ended 103 years of history atSouthampton’s old ground with a fairy-tale goal is playing darts while chomping on a Double Decker. “Drink?” he says, marching to the bar.
Havingstood down from his ambassadorial rolein 2022 after appearing to question whether war reports describing massacres in Ukraine could be believed, Le Tissier is back working for the club he so spectacularly represented on the pitch for 16 years.
Now 57, Le Tissier does not believe that he will everreturn to mainstream punditryafter his outspoken criticism of the government’s Covid lockdown policies, but he does think that the offer of a formal role again in elite football has coincided with a certain shift.
“The whole kind of wokeism... there’s been a lot of kickback,” he says. “There’s a lot of people now who realise that perhaps it just went a bit too far. At some point it’s going to swing back where everyone’s more calm and settled. And you can speak your mind without fear of getting cancelled from jobs because you had an opinion that was outside the government narrative.”
Le Tissier then laughs out loud when I mention the headlines he recently made foraccusing Grok of “government propaganda”over plane trails – “a mountain out of a molehill,” he says – but he remains convinced thathis abrupt exit fromSoccer Saturdayin 2020was a direct result of his vocal social media presence.
He still feels vindicated on both his Covid stance (something we discussed at length in aprevious interview) and hisreluctance to endorsethe Black Lives Matter movement. He also stresses that he got some things wrong and has admitted that his family was at one stage concerned for his mental health. But he is adamant that he will not be muted.
‘It cost me my job at Sky’
“I think that’s dangerous if everybody takes that view; then you just let yourself be bullied into silence,” he says. “Rational debate is the way we move forward as a society. I’ve always been fairly opinionated. I’ve always kind of been my own man and able to make my own decisions and have my own thoughts.
“And it’s costly. It cost me my job at Sky and anyone who tries to tell you different doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. But I’d do the same again.
“There aren’t many things I’ve regretted. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. You apologise, you correct it and you move on. If you’re on the government side and you f--- up, that’s fine. But on the side I was sat, nobody will accept your apology. You’re cancelled.
“I’m quite happy plodding along. I do my after-dinner speaking, which I’ve done for the last 20-odd years since I retired, although a few years ago people were trying to get me cancelled from jobs there. Because I said something about Covid or Black Lives Matter they didn’t think that I should be able to have a job speaking at football clubs about my football career. That’s cancel culture.”
‘Ukraine post was one of the mistakes I made’
Of his post relating to Ukraine, where he highlighted another user’s message claiming the media had lied about Covid and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before questioning whether they were telling the truth about Russian atrocities in Bucha, Le Tissier now says: “That was one of the mistakes I made. I posted the wrong example and I apologised for it. The club were getting a load of people trying to cancel me. I was ambassador, but I wasn’t on the payroll. I just went to Martin Semmens [then the chief executive] and said: ‘Look Martin, I don’t want you getting all that hassle.’”
And what has been the response to his return?
“The fans have always been great to me and most people understand that you’re allowed to have an opinion that’s different.
“I’ll never work in television again in terms of mainstream stuff. That doesn’t bother me. Especially as now I’m back here trying to help out the club that I’ve spent a massive part of my life at. I still get a buzz with it.”
After beating Arsenal and almost toppling Manchester City for a place in the FA Cup final, Southampton’sextraordinary run since Tonda Eckert became managerin November has led to them surging from 21st to a Championship play-off first leg at Middlesbrough on Saturday.
‘They can’t even add up my assists’
Le Tissier’s involvement in recent months has also spread beyond hosting a club podcast alongside commercial and ambassadorial work to spending more time at the training ground. He is especially interested in learning more about the data revolution since retiring in 2003. It would certainly be fascinating to compare his running and passing stats with the present day.
“Thankfully they didn’t have those cameras and trackers back then,” he says, smiling. “All I’ve got is 540 appearances, 209 goals. They can’t even add up my assists. I’ve had a rough guess. It was probably about 100 assists on top of the 209 goals. It’s not Messi and Ronaldo figures but it’s quite good, especially since I started as a nippy winger and three-quarters of my career was probably in midfield.”
The added point here was the truly extraordinary ratio of goals that were either goal-of-the-season contenders or decisive in keeping Southampton in the top flight throughout his career. For those who doubt how he might have fared in the modern era, Le Tissier also makes an important counter: “They’re playing on carpet most of the season now. We were lucky to get grass on the pitch until about October. It has allowed coaches to try to play on the ground, which I think would have suited me better.
“I remember seeing one game, my first ever hat-trick when I was 18 against Leicester. It had snowed that day, it was muddy and I was like: ‘How did I dribble on that?’ It was mad.
“But I wouldn’t change the time that I played. People weren’t so bothered with what you did. There wasn’t social media; there wasn’t that camera-phone environment where everything is documented. Even after we got beat on a Saturday afternoon, we’d still go out and have a drink.
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“One of the reasons I stayed [he turned down Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea] is because I liked having a fairly normal life. Even when we were in the middle of a relegation scrap, going into work was such good fun with the characters. There was never a day where you didn’t laugh... people taking the p--- out of each other and no one getting offended.”
One of the main arteries into the city would even greet visitors with his picture and the words “You are entering God’s country”. A little-known aside in recent years is that the man they called “Le God” has also found Christ himself, becoming a regular churchgoer in 2023 after attending the funeral of the wife of Dave Merrington, the former Southampton manager and a mentor to Le Tissier’s generation. Le Tissier was baptised last year.
‘I’ve had 35,000 West Ham fans singing big nose’
Away from the extremes of social media, he says that his everyday encounters with people are invariably positive, even at fierce rivals Portsmouth, where his ability to soak up being the pantomime villain could be a lesson to the darts world champion, Luke Littler.
“I think he’s getting some bad advice – needs to be better managed,” Le Tissier says. “You can’t beat 500 or a thousand people so there’s no point trying. I’ve had 35,000 West Ham fans singing, ‘Big nose, he’s got an effing big nose!’ And I’d just go, [shrugging his shoulders and pointing to his nose] and then they’re just like: ‘Oh, we won’t bother.’ That’s a life lesson.”
I wonder also what life lessons Le Tissier – a penalty-taker extraordinaire as much for his mental certainty as technical skill – can bring to a different generation of footballer and even manager. He has already been an occasional sounding board to the chief executive Phil Parsons and hopes that the learning can be mutual.
“Tonda’s very thorough in his preparation and very focused,” Le Tissier says. “If I see things that maybe we could improve on then I’ll just give my thoughts. If that helps, then so be it. It’s nice that they’ve given me that scope. It doesn’t mean they’re always going to take my advice, but they’re happy for me to give my opinion.
“There’s lots of little things I’m interested in finding out. For example, when players might be susceptible to injuries. In our day, you just relied on the player’s honesty to go, ‘It’s all right’ or ‘I don’t think I’m fit enough’. Those kind of decisions are almost being taken out of the player’s hands now. So I’m fascinated by what those metrics are. Where does the power lie in that little dynamic?”
When I suggest that it must all be a balance, Le Tissier nods and we are soon back to politics. “I think that’s not just in this scenario,” he says. “I think there’s a balance that needs to be found in all walks of life; that’s kind of been missing from the whole planet in the last six years.
“There are grey areas in most things. It’s important that we can identify that and make some sensible rational decisions by getting both perspectives. Sometimes you’ll fall on one side of the argument, sometimes the other.”
Le Tissier then bristles at the idea he can be pigeonholed at any extreme of the political spectrum. “I don’t like being put in a box,” he says. “I want to sit here and judge every subject on its merits – not because you’ve got to think this way because you’re in that tribe.”
‘Name-calling just stifles debate’
So does he think that he might surprise people with his views on some subjects? “Yeah, 100 per cent. People just assume things because you think one way about a certain subject. People don’t take the time to sit and chat or listen. They just want to label you as something... anti-Semitic or racist, or whatever they want to throw at you. That whole name-calling... it just stifles debate and it detracts from actually having a conversation about the issues.”
With the old party system on the brink of disintegration, I wonder whether he might go into politics.
“I’ve been asked that a few times. I don’t think I’m particularly interested. I feel like the system is a bit rigged at the minute, a bit s---. We’d be much better off with independent MPs and no party politics. I think the country would be less corrupt.
“I also think there should be a bit more like the Swiss-style direct democracy where you get referendums on big issues that really affect your country. Nobody voted for digital IDs. Nobody put that in their manifestos and yet successive governments have tried foisting it upon us. Legally, political parties should be made to actually stick to what is in their manifesto.”
So what does he think of Donald Trump? “I don’t really know if he is trying to break the system. I don’t know if he’s part of the system.”
‘Rupert Lowe and I have similar views on quite a few bits’
And how aboutRupert Lowe, once his old boss as Southampton chairman, and now an MP and leader of a party called Restore Britain? “I think we do have some very similar views on quite a few bits; there’s also quite a few bits where I think maybe he goes a little bit too far sometimes.
“I’d like to see less power in Westminster. I’d like to see local governments have more power and people police themselves better at local levels and not give huge amounts of money to the central government to spaff on stuff that people don’t need, and don’t vote for. The less civil servants and the less politicians we have, the better.”
So what do we waste money on? “We should help the people in this country first. And, when we’ve sorted our own country out, then we’ll be in a position to help others. If every country took that attitude, then the world would be a much better place.
“When we’ve got room to take people in, and look after other people, then let’s do that. We’ve got poverty in our population. I’m not blind to what’s going on. Perhaps people in the Westminster bubble don’t get to see.”
Shortly after our interview, I then spoke with someone who, while disagreeing with many of Le Tissier’s views, wanted to emphasise how brilliant he was when they spent a day together serving food to homeless people. It is a familiar sort of story around Southampton.
And, while we certainly do not agree on everything (Le Tissier says that is healthy anyway), it is hard to dispute one observation. People are generally also more multi-layered and nuanced than either their most vociferous supporters or critics would ever acknowledge.