20 January 2024 , 10:41
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Sky Sports legend Jeff Stelling has admitted that his stint on Soccer Saturday took a toll on his health before standing down from the show last year.
The renowned sports broadcaster, 68, fronted Sky Sports' iconic football results show for more than 25 years before officially calling time on his stint in front of the vidiprinter at the end of the 2022/23 campaign.
Since ending his long association with Sky, Stelling has landed a new job as the host of talkSPORT's breakfast show and was also awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours list for his services to sport, broadcasting and charity.
But the household favourite has now opened up on the strain that his dream job placed on him in the lead up to his exit.
And speaking in an interview with The Guardian, Stelling has revealed for the first time that his role on Soccer Saturday left him feeling ill most weekends. He said: “I had the most fantastic run on the show; I made the greatest mates and was paid well for one of the best jobs in the world. But the show was heading in a direction which meant it wasn’t quite the same.
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“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.’”
In 2020, several of Stelling's close friends and regular contributors to the Soccer Saturday show, Phil Thompson, Matt Le Tissier and Charlie Nicholas, were all axed.
Stelling fronted the football results show for over 25 years (Sky Sports)Stelling went on to admit that cull, followed by other big names leaving the broadcaster more recently such as Martin Tyler and Geoff Shreeves, did not help his feelings.
He added: “Soccer Saturday used to be distinctive and we had a great team of reporters who would do off-the-wall features. But it reached the point where I would go home Saturday [after the show] and never go out with my wife or family because I was so worn out. Sunday, I felt ill with the stress and that extended into Monday and I’d start work on the next show on Tuesday still feeling stressed out. All the time you were flat on the floorboards just to keep the show afloat.”
He continued: “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.”