Gary Lineker set to step down as Match of the Day host at end of season

Gary Lineker’s departure from Match of the Day at the end of the season is expected to be announced on Tuesday.

BBC News reported the 63-year-old former England striker was set to leave his role as host of the long-running football programme.

He will then leave the BBC after fronting the corporation’s coverage of the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada, according to The Sun.

The broadcaster reported Lineker was not offered a new contract for the show.

Lineker, who regularly tops public lists of the BBC’s highest earners, has presented Match of the Day since 1999, but speculation over his future has increased in recent months.

In March last year Lineker was briefly suspended from hosting the programme after his tweet about the British government’s asylum policy sparked a row about BBC presenters expressing political views on social media.

His fellow presenters and pundits, including Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, refused to appear on the show in solidarity with Lineker and it was reduced to a 20-minute highlights package, which contained no hosts, pundits or commentary. Lineker was reinstated just over a week later.

Mark Chapman, Gabby Logan and Alex Scott are the front-runners to succeed Lineker, but one prospective replacement, Jermaine Jenas, was axed by the BBC in September following an investigation into inappropriate behaviour.

Lineker took over as host of Match of the Day from Des Lynam in 1999, having started as a BBC Radio Five Live presenter and also worked on Grandstand.

No stranger to headlines, the former Tottenham, Everton and Barcelona striker presented the programme in his underpants in 2016 to keep a promise after boyhood club Leicester won the Premier League.

However, speculation has been mounting over Lineker’s future as host since an interview with BBC Breakfast in August in which he said he looked forward to “another year doing it, at least”.

Last week Lineker, who turns 64 at the end of November, admitted he would “have to slow down at some point” and intimated to Esquire magazine he may seek to focus full-time on his successful podcast business.

Lineker said: “I could do. Whether that will be the case I don’t know. At some point, I have to slow down somewhere…I’m getting old.”

Match of the Day pundit Danny Murphy paid tribute to the long-serving presenter.

The former Liverpool and Tottenham midfielder told talkSPORT: “He’s been phenomenal to me since the day I walked in the building.

“And a warm, charismatic, intelligent man who knows his football and has become part of everybody’s furniture, if you like, on a Saturday evening.

“He’s getting on a bit, just because he looks good for his age doesn’t mean he isn’t old. He’s getting tired in his old age, probably wants to just cook his Sunday roast.”

Published: 12/11/2024 by Radio NewsHub