KELLY CATES is set to leave Sky Sports and move to the BBC.
Gabby Logan, 49, and Mark Chapman will reportedly share hosting duties on Match of the Day and MOTD 2 next season when Gary Lineker steps down.
Cates has worked occasionally for the BBC since 2013, for Radio 5 Live.
Between 2013 and 2018 she co-hosted the iconic fan phone-in show 606 with Ian Wright on Sundays.
After joining Sky Sports, her role was reduced, but Cates returned to host the weekday sports show 5 Live Sport, usually on Tuesdays, while also covering the 2022 World Cup.
The daughter of Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish became a TV presenter for Sky Sports and worked on several Premier League shows including Friday Night Live.
Sky Sports bosses are reportedly sad to see her go, but she was believed to be the BBC's leading external candidate to take over from icon Lineker.
It completes a remarkable journey for Cates, who has enjoyed an impressive rise in sports broadcasting.
It was a role she didn't plan to take on when she was studying math at university!
She comes from the footballing royal family
Kelly grew up with football around her.
It was mother Marina who took her to the matches in which father Kenny played.
“When I was a baby, my mother would take me to games to watch my father play,” she said in an interview with When Saturday Comes magazine.
“I can't remember a time when I wasn't going to football games. My earliest memories are of being in the players' lounge with the other players' children.”
However, that did not make Kelly a Liverpool fan.
When her father moved to clubs including Blackburn and Newcastle United as manager, she hoped they would do well, even against the Reds.
Despite football being in her blood, she revealed she didn't have as much feeling for it as her famous father.
She laughed: “I ran through the wing and thought 'Oh, this will be easy', tripped and knocked myself out!
“That was the end of my football career.”
Thought of another life
Although she has become football broadcasting royalty, Cates almost turned down the opportunity to work in the game.
In college, being a sports TV presenter wasn't her thing at all.
She said: 'I studied maths but after leaving university I wanted to do something different.
“The Sky Sports News channel was launched and they were looking for young people who loved football.
“It was new and no one was watching, so they pretty much said to us, 'Go play on TV!'”
Family came first
Since the millennium, Cates' career rise has followed a steep trajectory.
She initially left Sky Sports in 2016 after wanting to start a family with then-fiancé Tom Cates, with whom she shares two children.
“I left Sky Sports News in 2006 after the World Cup in Germany,” she told The Overlap's 'Not Just Football' podcast in October.
“I had been there for eight years and had just turned thirty, or I was just turning 31. I was engaged, but not yet married. I already knew at that time that I wanted to have children soon.
“It had been in the back of my mind for a long time. I was coming to the end of my contract and working under my new contract and within the space of about three days I made the decision.
“One day I was driving to work, I walked in and said, 'I don't want to sign this new contract, I want to go!' I had nowhere to go.
“I just walked away but I was so sure I had to make that change. I did it when I left university to go to Sky, which is different because then you get something that is very exciting, shiny and new is dangled in front of you and you think: 'I'm going to take this leap'”.
Cates married in 2007, although they sadly divorced in 2021.
That same year she started a job at the now defunct Setanta Sports, taking jobs at ESPN, ITV and STV.
However, she returned to Sky Sports in 2016, feeling she had unfinished business.
She initially led their EFL coverage before becoming the main anchor for the Premier League.
Cates was a huge success for the channel, alongside Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher.
Who can forget when she hilariously turned her back on them after they turned their back on her during a segment that went wrong.
Sky's loss is BBC's gain as Kelly will split her time between MOTD and her role at Radio 5 Live.
It could be a match made in Heaven.
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