Matt Le Tissier was sacked by Sky Sports in 2020 after speaking out about the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, and remains dissatisfied.
Matt Le Tissier talks about leaving Sky Sports (Image: Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Matt Le Tissier has slammed “wokeism” and cancel culture, while reiterating that his personal views cost him his job at Sky Sports. The former Southampton midfielder was sacked from the broadcaster in 2020 after speaking out about the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The 57-year-old previously claimed he was only “questioning the narrative” about coronavirus by posting on social media. In 2022, he retweeted a post suggesting that the Bucha massacre in Ukraine was staged, leading to his removal as ambassador from Southampton over the incident.
Le Tissier continues to share other views, including a recent discussion with X’s AI bot Grok about chemtrails. And although he is branded by some as a conspiracy theorist, he has been welcomed back to Southampton and given an after-dinner speaking gig.
He insists he has no regrets about leaving Sky Sports, where he was a regular on Soccer Saturday, but the incident clearly still irritates him.
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“I’ve always been quite opinionated. I’ve always been able to go at my own pace, make my own decisions and have my own thoughts,” he told the Telegraph. “And it costs money. It cost me my job at Sky, and anyone who tries to say otherwise doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. But I would do it again.”
“There’s not a whole lot that I regret. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. You apologize, fix it and move on. If you’re on the government side and you screw up, that’s fine. But on the side I was sitting on, no one will accept your apology. You get cancelled.”
“I’m very happy to keep working. I give after-dinner speeches, and I’ve been doing that for 20-odd years since I retired, but a few years ago people were trying to get me fired from my job there.
Matt Le Tissier was a regular on Sky Sports (Image: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)
“Because I said something about coronavirus and Black Lives Matter, they thought I shouldn’t have a job talking about my football career at a football club. It’s cancel culture.”
On leaving Sky in 2022, Le Tissier said: “I started working in media from 2002 until late August 2020, and it was an interesting scenario to lose my job. Obviously, the pandemic started in March 2020, and very early on I was questioning what was really going on.”
“Early on, I felt there was a massive overreaction to this by the government, and from there it all started to make me question this story, which probably led to me ultimately losing my job at Sky.”
Le Tissier is currently on a speaking tour with former Sky co-stars Charlie Nicholas, Phil Thompson, Jeff Stelling and Paul Merson, and knows there is no way he will return to screen. “As far as mainstream work goes, I’ll never do TV again,” he admitted. “I don’t care about that.”
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