Matt Le Tissier was sacked by Sky Sports in 2020 after voicing his opinions on the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement and remains unhappy about it
Matt Le Tissier has hit out at “wokeism” and cancel culture while once again claiming that his personal views saw him lose his job at Sky Sports. The former Southampton midfielder was sacked by the broadcaster in 2020 after voicing his opinions on the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The 57-year-old has previously claimed that he was simply “questioning the narrative” around Covid by posting on social media. In 2022 he retweeted a post suggesting the Bucha massacre in Ukraine was staged – an incident which saw him dropped by Southampton as an ambassador.
Le Tissier continues to share his alternative views, with an argument he had with X’s AI bot Grok about ‘chemtrails’ recently going viral. And while he has been branded a conspiracy theorist by some, he has been welcomed back by Southampton and gets work on the after-dinner speaking circuit.
He insists he has no regrets over his departure from Sky Sports, where he was a regular on Soccer Saturday, but the way it happened clearly still irritates him.
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“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,” he told The Telegraph. “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.”
Speaking in 2022 about his departure from Sky, Le Tissier said: “I went into working in the media from 2002 onwards until late August 2020, which was an interesting scenario where I lost my job. Obviously the pandemic started in 2020 in March – and very early on in that I had my doubts as to what was really going on.
“I felt early on there was a massive overreaction to it by the governments. And that’s where it all started for me with questioning the narrative and probably ended up with me losing my job at Sky.”
Le Tissier now goes on speaking tours with his ex-Sky co-stars Charlie Nicholas, Phil Thompson, Jeff Stelling and Paul Merson and knows there is no way back onto our screens. “I’ll never work in television again in terms of mainstream stuff,” he admitted. “That doesn’t bother me.”
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