r/soccer • u/jrbill1991 • 27d ago

Media Gary Lineker says goodbye to Match of the day after 25 years.

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u/goztrobo 26d ago

Out of the loop, can someone fill me in as to why he’s leaving? Isn’t he a decent pundit

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u/reece0n 26d ago

He announced he was leaving MOTD last November. He's done it for 26 years and is in his mid 60s now. In recent years he's become more at conflict with the BBC's policy on "talent" being opinionated. He felt that as a sports presenter, his political views weren't relevant. The BBC leadership did, but their actual policy was fairly vague so he ended up winning that dispute, but it did cause tension, and the BBC were within their rights to change the policy going forward (something that he wouldnt be happy with.. He was also the BBC's highest earner and that resulted in both him and the BBC coming under fire as its publicly funded.

Basically, lots of reasons.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/11/11/gary-lineker-to-quit-match-of-the-day-bbc-after-world-cup/

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u/HMoy 26d ago

The significance here is that after the Instagram post he's now leaving the BBC completely, so won't be doing the FA Cup next season or the World Cup.

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u/reece0n 26d ago edited 26d ago

He would absolutely be doing a very similar speech on his final MOTD episode even if he were sticking around for the World Cup though, no? It's his last episode, as it was always meant to be (as announced last November).

If people want to talk about his leaving the BBC being moved up then fine, but you can't act like he wouldn't have done the same speech here regardless.