Gary Lineker says he would like Roy Keane to join The Rest Is Football at Edinburgh TV Festival
Gary Lineker said he would like Roy Keane to join his podcast The Rest Is Football during an appearance at the Edinburgh TV Festival on 25 August 2026. Lineker made the comments while discussing pundit choices and the growth of his podcast operation.
Lineker praised fellow Rest Is Football pundits Alan Shearer and Micah Richards while also singling out Keane’s combative delivery as especially appealing. He described Keane in one line as: "He’s box office." Lineker added, joking about Keane’s analytical contribution, that the Irishman "doesn’t give you that much" and said: "He’s bloody good at being Roy Keane."
Lineker said he had met Keane a few times and called him personally affable while emphasising Keane’s on-air persona: "I’ve met Roy a few times. He’s really sweet … he just plays a character and he’s good at it. He’s really good at it, and he obviously knows his [stuff]. I was kidding about the analytical thing, a little bit." He also said Keane "probably would" sign up for his show.
The remarks came against the backdrop of a commercial rivalry in football podcasting: Keane is part of Gary Neville’s The Overlap operation, which includes the Stick to Football show, and Stick to Football announced a deal with Disney. Lineker quipped about competing outfits, saying: "You’ve got Gary [Neville] and his team, you’ve got Piers Morgan and his team [making the World Cup Uncensored] show, and they’re just trying to copy," and added, "They’re trailing in our wake and I wish them all the very best. There is room, particularly in football. There’s a lot of competition."
Lineker cited audience figures and chart positions for The Rest Is Football as evidence of the format’s reach, noting the programme "appeared in Netflix’s daily top 10 charts on every day of its 40-day run of daily episodes filmed during the World Cup" and that The Rest Is Football "obtained more than 7m monthly streams for its content alone last season," a performance he used to needle rival operations as being "languishing miles behind." The article also noted an industry context, that "Given the huge expense of live sporting rights, punditry has become a popular option."
On stage, Lineker discussed his broader media role as a co-founder of the Goalhanger podcast stable and his public comments on political issues, particularly Gaza. He addressed recent criticism from the Telegraph over reposting a video by Tony Greenstein, described in the article as "an anti-Zionist who was cleared last week of inviting support for Hamas," in which the activist said: "Zionism is in the tradition of the Nazis who persecuted Jews." Lineker responded: "I don’t think I speak much about politics, although politics is involved in everything that I speak about. "I think ultimately you need to live with yourself and if I see things that upset me in humanitarian terms, then I find it quite upsetting, and it triggers me to use a platform that I would never have had before … People can disagree and that’s absolutely fine."
Netflix has opted to continue its partnership with The Rest Is Football during the domestic season, and Stick to Football has announced a similar deal with Disney.