Gary Lineker has fired a jibe at West Ham captain Kurt Zouma after the official club Twitter page shared an image of the defender at Rush Green.

The BBC pundit's dig was aimed at Zouma's incident last year, when he was filmed kicking, slapping and throwing his pet cat [The Sun, 14 February 2022], leading to plenty of controversy.

Sky Sports shared on 1 June 2022 that the Frenchman had been sentenced to 180 hours of community service for the offence, a five-year ban from keeping cats, as well as being ordered to pay almost PS9000 in court costs.

The Twitter post from the Hammers was simply captioned: "Our captain, Kurt Zouma" to which Lineker responded in jest on his personal Twitter account with "Just realised that captain is an anagram of cat pain."

Out of the blue

Almost two years have passed since the incident, and while initially the defender was met with boos and mocking chants from stadiums across the country, the reaction has massively died down as fans have moved on. Lineker, it appears, hasn't.

The Tweet was met with plenty of football fans joining in the laughs, while a few seemed annoyed at the joke, as clearly fans don't forget quite as easily as people may have thought.

Zouma, as he has since the incident, will continue to focus on his football regardless of the abuse and jibes he receives both on and off the pitch and has revelled in his role as the West Ham captain so far after a brilliant start to the season for David Moyes' side.

His punishment has been served, and lessons have surely been learned, so perhaps now, after almost two years, people can move on from the jokes. However unlikely that may be.

In other West Ham news, Fabrizio Romano has shared an update on possible Saudi interest.

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