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Kelly Cates always gets asked the same questions. What was it like having a footballing legend for a father? And how does it feel being a woman in a man’s world?
The response of the veteran football presenter – who has been propelled into the public consciousness after being named as one-third of the new lineup replacing Gary Lineker on Match of the Day – reveals a lot about the BBC’s new star.
“I think people overestimate the impact of your parents’ job on your life,” she said in a 2020 conversation with Gabby Logan, one of her co-presenters on the corporation’s football highlights show. “I think who they are as people has much more of a lasting impact than what they did as a job.”
But reflecting on growing up as Kenny Dalglish’s daughter on Logan’s The MidPoint podcast, she acknowledged that her childhood – she was just two when the former player and manager signed for Liverpool – had given her a sort of superpower in the male-dominated world of football.
“Because I always felt part of that world, it never occurred to me to question my place in it,” she said. “I think maybe starting from the inside gave me a sense of belonging.”
The BBC confirmed this week that Cates, who has presented Premier League games for Sky since 2017 and will continue to do so, will present Match of the Day alongside BBC stalwarts Mark Chapman and Logan from next season – the first time presenting duties have been shared in the show’s 60-year history. The trio will replace the former England striker-turned-podcast mogul Lineker, who stepped down in November – with speculation rife about the impact of the change on the show.
While Logan is one of the BBC’s best-known sports presenters and Chapman is the regular host of Match of the Day 2, Cates will be a less familiar figure to the general public, despite a 27-year career in football with stints on all major broadcasters, including the BBC on Radio 5 Live.
Born in Glasgow, the 49-year-old could have taken a very different career path – she was two years into a maths degree at Glasgow University when an opportunity arose at the nascent Sky Sports News, which she joined in 1998. She later joined Setanta Sports News, then ESPN before covering the South African World Cup in 2010 for ITV. A brief stint at Channel 5 for the 2015-16 season ended when she rejoined Sky in 2016 to present its live coverage of the EPL Football League before switching to Premier League matches from August 2017.
Reflecting on her career with typical self-deprecation, she said: “You want to do your job well because of personal pride [and] you’re covering something that is important to people. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s football on the telly. You know, I’m not going to change the world.”
In an industry that can be po-faced, cliquey and consumed by its own importance, Cates provides much-needed humour, said the football journalist Rory Smith, who works regularly with her on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club. “That’s not to say she’s not a heavyweight or she can’t deal with the serious issues that arise in football with alarming regularity, but she makes things feel light in a way that is really helpful and is actually quite rare,” he said. “Kelly comes across as really nice on the TV because she’s really nice. That’s basically it.”
The Sky Sports News anchor Hayley McQueen, who hosts the Not Just Football podcast with Cates, described her as “the ultimate professional” who never panicked. “She’s obviously in one of the top jobs at Sky but has been under the radar. I think she’s never been one to shout from the rooftops about what she does,” she says. “She’s extremely quick-witted, very humorous, she’s a great laugh and absolutely does not take herself seriously. I think the most important thing she’s going to bring to a programme like Match of the Day is her warmth.”
Cates’s personality means it is also unlikely she will express her political opinions on social media, according to those that know her, unlike her predecessor Lineker, who was taken off air by the BBC in March 2023 after criticising the language used by ministers when discussing the government’s asylum policy, but reinstated after some of his colleagues pulled out of shows in solidarity. “It’s hard to imagine Kelly having that impulse,” said one broadcaster.
There have been grumbles that the BBC has sidestepped making a woman the sole presenter of MOTD – but having two respected senior female broadcasters in such key roles could be a “gamechanger”, said the football commentator Robyn Cowen. Cates had been a support when she had her own son, she added, telling her it was hard being a mother in football but worth it. “To get that message from someone like her meant more than she’ll ever know,” she said.
As a working mother who had successfully juggled top jobs with raising her two daughters, Cates would be an inspiration for other women coming into football, said McQueen.
“I love the fact that her girls will see her as a really hard-working mum who’s really respected and good at managing their time as well as her own,” she said. “I think people are going to absolutely love what they’re going to see from Kelly – it’s her time right now.”
