Good on you, Gary: you’ve got balls

About 18 months ago, I was walking through central London with Gary Lineker, on our way to a dinner at which he was speaking. It was around the time that the BBC was under pressure to sack Lineker from Match of the Day for breaking its rules by expressing political opinions on his social media feed. Through the busy streets of the West End we walked, and every few yards someone would spot Lineker and say something to him like “Good on you, Gary” or “Keep going, Gary” or “Don’t let those bastards get you down”.

A few days later, when the news broke that the Beeb had suspended him from the show for refusing to disown his tweets, Lineker walked into his local Marks and Spencer and got a spontaneous ovation from shoppers. So don’t listen to the Faragists and the right-wing commentators: it is impossible to exaggerate how popular Lineker is with the general public, how important a figure he is in the age-defining culture wars , and what a watershed moment his departure is for our national broadcaster, and our national game. I am not exactly impartial myself on the subject.



I have known Lineker for some 30 years (ever since he was a sports columnist on The Observer , insisting he write every word himself), I admire him as a presenter, and I happen to agree with him on most matters outside football . No man is bigger than the game. That’s what football pundits like to say when players get too big for their boots.

With Lineker, however, that’s not strictly true, as was demonstrated in March last year when the BBC suspended him from Match of the Day for his now infamous tweet that the Tory government’s Illegal Immigration Bill was an “immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. Lineker, who never received even a yellow card in his 16-year playing career, was ruled offside, told his view had breached BBC rules on neutrality and was taken off the air. “We have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies,” the BBC said.

Read Next How woke are you? Take our quiz to find out One by one, fellow presenters and analysts walked out in support of Lineker, and the BBC was forced to reduce MoTD to a 20-minute highlight package. The story led the national news. Viewers were outraged, the corporation was criticised for bowing to government influence, and the Director General Tim Davie ended up apologising for the break in transmission of one of the nation’s most cherished shows.

An independent review of the BBC’s guidelines was announced, the programme was put back together again, and the subsequent rewriting of its impartiality policy gave Lineker – a contracted freelance, rather than a Beeb staffer – some leeway to comment on events more significant than the failures of Leicester City’s back four. Gary Lineker, as you can see, was indeed bigger than the game. In the 25 years he has presented Match of The Day , he has become the consummate performer, speaking with the unimpeachable authority of someone who has succeeded at the highest level of the game – 48 goals in 80 appearances for England, and the Golden Boot in the 1986 World Cup – and proving himself as a expert practitioner of the broadcast arts.

Lineker, above all, is a quick and eager learner. When his playing career took him abroad, he learned Spanish and Japanese. At The Observer , he was keen to understand the journalistic craft.

And when he ascended to the presenter’s role at Match of the Day , he took his responsibility extremely seriously, and would take advice from his predecessor, the masterly Des Lynam. The pithy one-liners with which Lineker ends a show – which, incidentally, he writes himself – are distinctly from the school of Lynam. We are going to miss him more than he will miss us .

His production company, Goalhanger Productions, is responsible for some of the country’s most popular podcasts and Lineker will enjoy the success, both financial and in terms of esteem, that this brings him for some time to come. Saturday nights, however, will not be the same again. And at a time when the public forum is dominated by big tech, big business and big money, we need individuals of influence to speak up for the dispossessed and those without a voice, Gary Lineker’s thoughtful contributions will be missed.

As the people said: good on you, Gary. You’ve got balls..