‘I cringe about that’ says Soccer AM legend as he admits regret over much-loved segment that ‘pushed the boundaries’

TIM LOVEJOY has admitted that he regrets doing a much-loved segment on Soccer AM.

The presenter was the star of the Sky show between 1996 and 2007.

Sky

Tim Lovejoy regrets the Soccerettes section from Soccer AM[/caption]

Sky

The presenter insisted that he ‘cringes’ when thinking about it[/caption]

Soccer AM had multiple segments, including interviews with players and “Showboat” that showed off skill moves from that week’s football.

However, Lovejoy, 56, does not remember the “Soccerettes” section that fondly.

The segment involved a woman wearing a football shirt, who would be interviewed and do a catwalk in front of the Fans of the Week.

The gimmick was stopped in 2015 after being judged as politically incorrect, with the show being cancelled in 2023.

Lovejoy insisted that the segment was made as they were told to “push boundaries”.

He told talkSPORT: “Don’t bring that up, I cringe about that.

“But it was a different time and we were told to push the boundaries.

“We were just doing different stuff and people had a laugh and a joke with it.”

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Lovejoy has some good memories of the show and loved the Showboat section.

He added: “When we started Showboat we loved it but after three or four weeks I got called in by one of the bosses, who was brilliant by the way, but he said a couple of the managers have complained about you putting their players on Showboat. 

Natalie Sawyer appeared as a Soccerette on Soccer AM

Sky

Gemma Atkinson was also one of the girls to appear on the show[/caption]

“In the 90s it was percentage football, ‘We’re not showboating ponies and we’re here to win a match and be dedicated to the fans’. They hated it for two or three years but every player was trying to get on.

“One thing that has changed since 1996 is that we used to be able to get players on the show and then by the time I left 11 years later the sport had grown so much that Premier League clubs wouldn’t let players come on. 

“We used to get them when they were suspended or injured on a Saturday and then the clubs started saying no.”

Lovejoy left the show in 2007 after a pay dispute.

In 2020, he told the Athletic that he believed that people who appeared on screen should be paid more.

He said: “I’d done 11 years, and I absolutely adored the show. But we were being treated like a production team of any other part of Sky.

“For a few years I’d been saying: if someone appears on screen can they get a few quid more?

“It started getting embarrassing in the end. Some of them were getting paid so little money, they were saying to me ‘Tim, I’ve got to leave soon, because I’ve been doing eight years of this’.

“I went to see the bosses and said: ‘Look, is there any way that we can pay the guys proper money?’

“They just said: ‘No, they’re researchers and assistant producers’. I really pleaded with them to pay the team what they deserved. But I understand why the bosses couldn’t do it.”