Gary Lineker has revealed that he was in tears after learning that fellow Match of the Day stars Ian Wright and Alan Shearer wouldn’t go on air during his controversial BBC suspension. Lineker, who’s presented the show for the last 26 years, was taken off air in March 2023 after breaching the broadcaster’s impartiality guidelines in a move which he ‘doesn’t regret but wouldn’t do again’.
Criticising the UK government’s immigration policy, the former England striker stated that the language used by then-home secretary Suella Braverman was ‘not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 1930s’. Lineker was removed from hosting duties that weekend but in solidarity, a number of other sports presenters and pundits for the broadcaster downed tools.
Wright and Shearer were chief among them, having been at Lineker’s side for much of his time as the BBC’s lead football presenter which will end in 2026. The 64-year-old says that he only found out that he was being taken off air by a news alert on his phone.
“At that point, I was having late lunch and Ian Wright went public, saying (he would refuse to go on air),” Lineker told the BBC in a new interview. “We have a group chat and the day before I said, ‘This might result in them taking me off air’. And he went, ‘That’s so ridiculous’. He said, ‘If they do, I’m not doing the show’.
“And it’s one thing saying that, it’s a very much different thing actually doing it… And then Alan Shearer followed about half an hour later and I was in the back of a cab on the way home when that happened and I was crying because that doesn’t happen, that show of the support, it was incredible. It meant so much.”
Match of the Day was broadcast on Saturday, March 11 with no presenter, no pundits and no analysis. The show returned in its normal format the following weekend.
Lineker felt touched by the public show of support from his colleagues but didn’t like the repetitional damage suffered by the BBC, who reinstated him within a few days. “I don’t regret saying them publicly, because I was right – what I said, it was accurate – so not at all in that sense,” he explained.
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“Would I, in hindsight, do it again? No I wouldn’t, because of all the nonsense that came with it… It was a ridiculous overreaction that was just a reply to someone that was being very rude. And I wasn’t particularly rude back.”
Lineker added: “But I wouldn’t do it again because of all the kerfuffle that followed, and I love the BBC, and I didn’t like the damage that it did to the BBC… But do I regret it and do I think it was the wrong thing to do? No.”
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