11 of Matt Le Tissier’s wildest conspiracy theories from vaccines to the ‘communist takeover’ | OneFootball

Matt Le Tissier is a Southampton legend and one of the Premier League’s original ballers, but his metamorphosis into a latter-day David Icke has produced some of the wildest conspiracy theories you’re ever likely to see.

For all his jaw-dropping talent as a footballer, Le Tissier has spent much of the last three years defecating on his legacy from the height of the Eiffel Tower, ostracising himself from the mainstream and siding firmly with the inhabitants of society’s fringes.

We’ve trawled through the murky undergrowth of Twitter to bring you 11 of his steaming hot takes.

Communist takeover

Tell us Matt, are the communists in the room with you now?

Covid concerns

Le Tissier’s views first came under media scrutiny when he posted a controversial tweet about the fast-developing Covid crisis in March 2020.

“Why scare the entire population with this coronavirus stuff?” asked the former England international. “It’s only the elderly and people with existing conditions that are at risk but you’d expect everyone was going to die by the way it’s being reported.”

NHS actors

Le Tissier has also claimed some of the patients who were dying or critically ill in a hospital in Italy at the start of the pandemic were actors.

When questioned about the images of these patients by The Times in April 2022, he replied: “Some of those were actors, by the way.” Mad, mad stuff.

Ventilators and tests

In that same interview with The Times, Le Tissier insisted that ventilators ’caused harm to patients’ and PCR tests were ‘entirely responsible for elevating a flu bug into a pandemic’.

He also suggested masks, which were proven to stop the spread of the virus, were a sign of compliance. We reason that Le Tissier has burrowed his way thousands of miles into a rabbit hole.

Tanzanian President

It’s the maddest sh*t you’ll read all year; Le Tissier implying that Bill Gates ordered a hit on the President of Tanzania is probably the biggest case in favour of banning heading in football.

Sky Sports sacking

After years as part of the successful Soccer Saturday set-up, Le Tissier was released from his Sky contract in 2020. He took it as well as you’d expect.

The Southampton legend has insisted Sky ‘didn’t give a reason’ for his exit, yet there was significant pressure on the broadcaster to sack him following his tweets about Covid.

“Within five seconds I was told there was no more work for me at Sky,” he told The Rob Moore podcast in June 2022.

“I had about seven months left to run on my contract but I was told that I wouldn’t be needed anymore. They didn’t really give a particular reason, they just said ‘the show was going in a different direction’ – they were the words I think they used.

“So I asked the question, does this have anything to do with my posts on social media? To which their reply was, ‘well we have to take into account the reputation of the company when making these decisions.’

“At which point I said ‘oh that’s interesting, because at the moment, you are employing somebody who spat at a girl from his car’. Jamie Carragher, who spat at a young girl through his car. They suspended him for six months and then brought him back into the fold.

“I said ‘do you not think that might have harmed the reputation of the company at all’ and I got told ‘we can’t talk about other people on this’ so that was it really.”

Anne Frank

Around the time of his Sky Sports departure, Le Tissier outraged many by referencing Anne Frank in an argument against face masks.

He quote-tweeted a post that read: “The people who hid Anne Frank were breaking the law. The people who killed her were following it.” He added: “Remember this.” The post was initially uploaded in response to a video that showed a police officer challenging a train user for not wearing a face covering.

The 54-year-old was slammed for the tweet, but initially fought back against critics by writing: “This appears to have got a lot of bots and trolls tweeting me about masks! Yet I’ve just checked again and still I find no reference to masks anywhere in the original tweet!”

But he later apologised and deleted his tweet: “Apologies for the recent tweet. Obviously taken out of context so I’ve deleted it so there’s no confusion.”

Footballer’s heart problems

Incredibly outspoken about the COVID vaccine, Le Tissier has looked for the loosest of hooks to hang his metaphorical hat.

Bucha massacre

This one was just grim.

There was much shock and sadness when 1000 bodies were discovered in the Ukrainian city of Bucha last April, including 31 children, amid the ongoing war with Russia.

Responding the massacre, a Twitter account posted: “The media lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction. The media lied about Covid. The media lied about the Hunter Biden laptop. But honestly, they are telling the truth about Bucha!”

The post suggested the massacre was staged, something Russia has claimed after facing an international backlash. Le Tissier quote tweeted the post and wrote: “This.”

He was immediately criticised by scores of prominent people on Twitter for his bone-headed remark.

Ali Dia

Wait, this actually did happen.

9/11

While Le Tissier has not blessed us with his full explanation, he has made it abundantly clear he is sceptical about the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on September 11 2001.

“There’s enough structural engineers I have listened to that have all said there is no way a plane could do that to a building unless there was some kind of controlled explosion,” Le Tissier said to a baffled Ray Parlour and Alan Brazil about a disaster that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people.