Gary Lineker, TV pundit and former England captain, leaves BBC’s ‘Match of the Day’ 25 years after taking up

TV pundit and former participant Gary Lineker.
| Photograph Credit score: Motion Photographs through Reuters

Former England soccer captain Gary Lineker is ready to go away his position presenting the BBC’s flagship Match of the Day highlights present on the finish of the season, BBC Information reported on Monday (November 11, 2024).

The 63-year-old took over as host of the Saturday night time programme in 1999.

In March final yr, Lineker was briefly taken off air by bosses after evaluating the language used to launch a British authorities asylum coverage to the rhetoric of Nazi-era Germany on social media.

That sparked a row about BBC presenters expressing political beliefs.

In solidarity with Lineker, numerous fellow presenters and pundits together with Alan Shearer and Ian Wright refused to look on the programme, that means an episode was lowered to twenty minutes and aired with out its host, pundits and commentary. Lineker was reinstated simply over every week later

The previous Leicester, Everton, Tottenham and Barcelona ahead has hosted refugees in his dwelling and has typically criticised authorities insurance policies, notably on immigration.

The BBC launched an unbiased overview of its social medial pointers, which really helpful that high-profile presenters ought to be capable of specific views on political points however ought to cease wanting campaigning on get together politics or for activist organisations.

Hypothesis had been mounting over Lineker’s future since an interview with BBC Breakfast in August through which he mentioned he seemed ahead to “one other yr doing it, at the very least”.

Final week Lineker, who turns 64 on the finish of November, admitted he would “need to decelerate sooner or later”, and intimated to Esquire journal that he might search to focus full-time on his profitable podcast enterprise.

Lineker topped the BBC’s pay listing in 2023-24 monetary yr, incomes greater than 1.35 million kilos ($1.74 million).

In August 2016, Lineker made good on an earlier promise to current the present in his underpants after his boyhood membership Leicester received the Premier League.

(With inputs from Reuters)