Jeff Stelling has revealed the real reason he left Soccer Saturday amid Chris Kamara reunion

Jeff Stelling has revealed the real reason why he decided to stop presenting Soccer Saturday after 29 years in the role.

Stelling took over as Soccer Saturday's sole presenter in 1994, playing a lead role in transforming it into a Saturday afternoon sporting institution for viewers.

He initially announced his decision to leave the programme at the end of the 2021/22 season but decided to stay on for another year.

Stelling called it quits for good in 2023 and was replaced by Simon Thomas, who formerly presented Premier League and EFL coverage for Sky Sports.

This season, 67-year-old Stelling has been back in football with talkSPORT and now Amazon Prime, where he is presenting the 'Every Game Every Goal' show.

Stelling and Chris Kamara are giving updates on the Premier League's Boxing Day fixtures, with Kamara - who himself left Sky Sports in 2022 - live from the City Ground during Nottingham Forest's 3pm clash with Tottenham Hotspur.

Stelling initially remained tight-lipped about his exit from Sky, but speaking to The Guardian in January, he gave several reasons as to why he decided to step away from weekly television.

He explained: "Soccer Saturday used to be distinctive and we had a great team of reporters who would do off-the-wall interviews.

"But I reached the point where I would go home Saturday [after the show] and never go out with my wife or family because I was so worn out.

"Sunday, I felt ill with all the stress, and that extended into Monday, and I'd start work on the next show on Tuesday still feeling stressed out. All the time you were flat on the floorboards just to keep the show afloat."

Stelling continued: "I'm almost ashamed to say it because my dad worked in a steelworks and would come back from his shift covered in grime and muck and absolutely exhausted. He would never have allowed me to say I was shattered after a TV show. But I felt it was making me ill so I had to step away."

He revealed how he became 'tired' of fighting an ongoing battle, which was having a knock-on effect on his health.

"I had the most fantastic run on the show," the lifelong Hartlepool United fan said. "I made the greatest mates and was paid well for one of the best jobs in the world.

"But the show was heading in a direction which meant it wasn't quite the same.

"Even though I'd been there a long time, I felt some of my views weren't considered at all. Every week I was fighting a battle. I got tired of fighting and it was making me ill.

"Eventually I went to Sky's management and said: 'This is making me unwell. I've got to step away from it'."

Matt Le Tissier, Paul Merson, Phil Thompson and Charlie Nicholas were all studio pundits while Stelling presented Soccer Saturday (Image: Sky Sports)

Stelling had previously been asked about the much-publicised departures of long-standing studio pundits Matt Le Tissier, Phil Thompson and Charlie Nicholas in 2020 - and whether their exits prompted him to think about whether he should leave.

"It would be honest to say that. Yes, of course," he told The Guardian in the same year. "Whether I want to effectively start again is another question.

"We've done it with the first team we had - Bestie [George Best], Marshy [Rodney Marsh], Frank [McLintock] and Clive [Allen], and then we built another team [Le Tissier, Thompson, Nicholas and Paul Merson]. I'm 65. I've had a fantastic run."