Everton have questioned whether high-profile fitness instructor Joe Wicks should have been supporting them for the past 25 years.
The club’s Twitter account responded by declaring: “If you know your history” accompanied by an eyeglass emoji to Wicks after Evertonian Stephen Joyce contacted them saying: “This lad has been supporting the wrong team for years” with a video clip showing the self-styled ‘Body Coach’ being interviewed before this year’s Soccer Aid match over the weekend.
Wicks was in the England squad to face a World XI for the annual UNICEF fundraising game at Old Trafford and ahead of the game he was asked what were his earliest memories of football.
The 34-year-old from Epson, Surrey, responded: “The first memory that I’ve got of football is, I think it was 1995, the FA Cup final between Chelsea and Man United.
“My dad was going to do a bet for us and I was only little and he said ‘do you want blue or red?’ and I said ‘I want the blue team.’
“So that was the first day I became a Chelsea fan basically.”
As any Everton fan worth their salt will tell you, the 1995 FA Cup final was between their team and Manchester United – not Chelsea!
Paul Rideout’s goal brought the trophy back to Merseyside and left Alex Ferguson’s side empty-handed for the season and it remains Everton’s last major silverware to date – the longest drought in the club’s history.
Perhaps Wicks is remembering the FA Cup final from the year before when Manchester United thrashed Chelsea 4-0 to complete a domestic double?
If not, he really has been supporting the wrong team for a quarter of a century but has cushioned the blow by seeing the Stamford Bridge outfit lift five League Championships, seven FA Cups, four League Cups, a Champions League and two Europa Leagues over the subsequent period.
Maybe Carlo Ancelotti could now tempt him to pay a visit to Goodison Park though...
