MICAH RICHARDS left Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer in stitches as he revealed why one of Manchester City’s greatest days left him “the angriest” he has ever been.
The trio all enjoyed great success on the football pitch and now regularly work alongside each other on BBC.
They have also recently embarked on a brand new football podcast named “The Rest Is Football”.
And it was during an episode of their latest venture that Richards was mocked by his colleagues as he recounted Man City’s iconic last-ditch Premier League title victory in 2012.
Trailing QPR on the final day of the season 2-1 going into additional time, Edin Dzecko came off the bench to equalise.
And then Sergio Aguero earned himself legendary status as he fired in a dramatic winner to earn Roberto Mancini’s side the title.
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However, despite being part of that dramatic afternoon as an unused sub, former City defender Richards still counts the day as a painful one after being dropped in favour of Pablo Zabaleta at right-back.
And the 35-year-old had his former England striking colleagues crying with laughter as he recalled the agony of not only being dropped for the Argentina ace – but then having to sit there and watch him open the scoring.
Richards said: “We’re going to the room where he is writing the team and I’m always a second player if I’m going to get picked because when you write on the board it’s always the goalkeeper and then you start with the right-back.
“He [Mancini] has wrote in Joe Hart and I’ve never watched someone so closely to see what letter he is going to write… If he starts on the left then it means that he is going to write ‘Z’ and go straight across.
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“If he starts in the middle or at the end and goes down first then he is going to write an ‘R’ for Richards. And what does he do? He goes across like that… Za… Zabaleta.
“I just thought f*** this! I didn’t do the warm-up properly. But Mancini, the thing is, he wouldn’t even make eye contact with me because he knew what he’d done.”
As Shearer and Lineker struggled to hold back their laughter, Richards continued: “And what happens in the game? Zabaleta scored the first goal.”
The chuckling Lineker then asks: “Did you cheer and jump up off the bench?”
To which Richards bluntly replied: “Did I cheer? I’ve never been so angry in all my life.”
However, despite his personal anguish, Richards said all of that washed away as he willed his team on from the dug-out during the closing stages.
Although he still had time to get mocked one more time by Shearer and Lineker as they burst into laughter as he added: “I was in paradise. It was like everything was in slow motion. It was jubilation, it was disappointment.
“But you know what p***es me off more than anything… ‘Oh, what was it like to play in that QPR game?’ I’ve never got over it.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
