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Gary Lineker has told Jamie Carragher that the numbers do the talking after the Liverpool legend took a cheeky jab at The Rest Is Football. The podcast, which Lineker presents alongside Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, recently signed a deal with Netflix for the 2026 World Cup.

And it appears as though the trio's success has rubbed some rivaling pundits the wrong way, Carragher included. Speaking on CBS Sports' Champions League coverage on Tuesday night, Anita Jones said: "Micah, I'm hoping that you're going to send me some of that Netflix money though," prompting the Manchester City legend to erupt with laughter. Jones then added: "I didn't get an answer though. Are you going to send me some of the Netflix money or what?"

Carragher then added: "Oh, the Netflix deal for the podcast that no-one listens to? Honestly, I don't know anyone who listens to it!" before Richards defended his show as "just the number one pod in the UK."

Richards wasted no time in bringing up the matter in the most recent instalment of the Rest Is Football, when he asked Lineker: "Did you see Jamie Carragher having a pop at our podcast? Saying nobody listens to it and all that..."

Cool and collected, Lineker pulled no punches with his response, explaining: "I think we have significantly more listeners than the one he does, I can't remember what it's called now," returning fire toward The Overlap, which Caragher hosts alongside Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Ian Wright and Jill Scott.

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Richards then added: "We have got podcast wars now guys, get into gear because we have been nothing but nice. I like the team over there, I've worked with a lot of their staff, really nice people and really good at what they do but you can't be calling out our pod. We have got to defend it with everything we have."

However, Lineker insisted that the numbers should do the talking in the grand scheme of things. He explained: "We don't need to, we just defend it with numbers. Remind me, who got the Netflix gig for the World Cup? I did see it. Thank you for the mention, they did mention it was an award-winning podcast as well."

Recent findings by Edison show that The Rest Is Football is the fifth-most popular podcast in the UK. It also tops the charts in terms of sporting content.The Overlap, meanwhile, sits at number 17 on the rankings.

Lineker co-established Goalhanger, the media company behind The Rest Is Football and a wealth of other successful podcasts. The firm recently revealed it had exceeded 250,000 paying subscribers throughout its portfolio, generating 70 million episode downloads each month across audio and video formats for 14 regular programmes.