The Match of the Day debate: Can BBC show survive without Gary Lineker?

Following the news that Gary Lineker is to leave his long-time role as presenter of Match of the Day at the end of the season, Telegraph writers Oliver Brown and Thom Gibbs offer their views on what the future looks like now for the popular show.

Without Lineker, Match of the Day is in peril

It is profoundly illogical, when you stop to think about it, that Match of the Day still exists at all. By the time it airs on BBC One at 10.30pm, give or take, every Premier League goal it is about to broadcast has been viewable on YouTube for more than five hours.

Its only unique selling point is the vanilla quippery of Gary Lineker, steering his mates-down-the-pub badinage with Alan Shearer and Micah Richards by making his lovingly scripted one-liners sound ad-libbed.

Easily dispensable, you might think. And yet at the height of Lineker’s stand-off with his employers in March last year, when the show reverted to being a linear, repartee-free football highlights reel denuded of even its jaunty theme tune, many loyal viewers howled with outrage, likening the stripped-back version to North Korean state television.

At that moment, the martyrdom of the host was complete. A week that had begun with Lineker unwisely comparing Suella Braverman’s asylum policy to the language of 1930s Germany ended with him lauded for providing a vital national service.

He was not exactly shy of advertising the fact. Lineker promptly posted a picture of himself beside the inscription at Broadcasting House of George Orwell’s statement that “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

When I asked him how he had dealt with the mayhem of those few days, he told the story of being given a standing ovation in the Barnes branch of M&S – an environment where, so far as I could tell, most people would be standing up regardless. The remark cemented the impression of Lineker as high priest of south-west London’s bleeding-heart liberals, wearing the accusation of wokery as a badge of honour, while bravely speaking truth to power on £1.35 million a year.

His sanctimony may grate but he is a reassuring presence

Ever since, Lineker’s role at the BBC has been the classic case of “can’t live with him, can’t live without him”. The awkwardness of his position was not difficult to discern. Who else could present the same show at the same time for 25 years and claim that the corporation’s foundational principle of political impartiality did not apply to him because he was a freelancer?

Who else could transplant the MotD pundits to his own podcast studio to produce a remarkably similar show, just with extra profanity, and not receive a murmur of rebuke? Who else could posture on the Israel-Gaza conflict as just your average concerned citizen while promoting the sophomoric propaganda of Owen Jones?

The paradox is that Lineker’s departure from MotD throws the future of a much-loved institution into jeopardy. Yes, his sanctimony might have grated. Yes, he should have shown greater solidarity with his BBC radio colleagues when they were carpeted for abuse for going to work on the same day that he was posing for selfies with Leicester City fans congratulating him on his righteous stand. But he is such a reassuringly predictable presence that without him, the programme struggles to justify its existence.

Ultimately, MotD is a shot of pure nostalgia. It is a reminder of being allowed to stay up late on Saturday nights, a capturing of the thrill of great sport through Barry Stoller’s jolly, brass-fuelled theme music.

In its entire 60-year run it has had only five regular main presenters: Kenneth Wolstenholme, David Coleman, Jimmy Hill, Des Lynam and now, for a quarter of the century, Lineker.

For all Lineker’s alienating soapbox antics, all his ill-advised forays into subjects of which he knows little, his exit will leave a void large enough to make you wonder whether MotD can continue at all.

The talk is that the format is soon to be freshened up. This should send a chill through MotD’s loyal viewership, who know only too well what BBC Sport’s notion of a fresh approach tends to mean.

It means Football Focus pivoting from analysing actual football to a poetry reading in honour of Black History Month. It means Ski Sunday whipping through footage of the men’s downhill to a wearisome debate about whether skiing has a diversity problem. It means Sports Personality of the Year exchanging Lynam’s sardonic asides for a soaring tribute to the Lionesses inspired by the words of Maya Angelou.

Risk of Football Focus-style revamp

As a consequence, the profile of all these cherished shows has suffered. The dangers of a similarly drastic reinvention of MotD are self-evident. The prevailing winds are already against it: quite apart from the commercial factor of goals being available to view online from 5.15pm, fewer matches are due to take place on Saturdays over the next broadcast cycle from 2025 to 2029.

With the higher-profile Premier League fixtures increasingly switching to Sundays, MotD’s core offering is becoming diluted, and that trend is only likely to accelerate if the BBC attempt an achingly on-message, Football Focus-style revamp.

The impression, reinforced by the BBC’s culture and media editor revealing that Lineker was not offered a new MotD contract despite wanting to stay on, is that the corporation feel they need their highest-paid star less than he needs them.

In a sense, it is refreshing that they are not prepared to genuflect. Barbara Slater’s remark to MPs last November – “We love Gary and Gary loves us” – was toe-curlingly deferential given the chaos his rogue tweeting had caused them.

They should perhaps be careful what they wish for: trade in Lineker for a younger, hipper equivalent – Alex Scott? Theo Walcott? – and they risk compromising MotD’s raison d’être as one of TV’s few precious sanctuaries. In the end, Lineker’s familiarity bred a certain contempt. But the virtue of being familiar is powerful in itself, and one the BBC underestimate at their peril.

Time for BBC and MotD to embrace change and join the modern world

There is some concern in America that Donald Trump has his eyes on a third term at the end of his forthcoming presidency. This seems unlikely, as it is forbidden under the constitution’s 22nd amendment. This is a rule that sports broadcasters should also consider adopting.

It is difficult to say anything new after 10 years as a pundit or co-commentator. This is the point at which you should have your black leather-white sole trainers confiscated and be quietly taken off to a nice farm to retire.

Under these hardline but necessary laws, Gary Lineker would have been eased off television about 20 years ago. But moving from pundit to presenter can be a route to longevity and Lineker has proved he can adapt better than most.

The tastes of the football fan and tone of the game’s coverage has changed enormously since he took over from Des Lynam in 1999 as host of Match of the Day.

Lineker’s current approach is far more interventionist than years past and almost aggressively casual, an entirely different beast to the stiff-suited mood of the programme he joined after retiring as a player. Nevertheless, the time is now right for him to step aside.

How do you replace an institution? Whatever your views on Lineker, and his views about yours, Match of the Day is about as good as it could be. Well-produced highlights which capture everything of note, analysis pitched to satisfy the nerds while remaining accessible for anyone allergic to the idea of xG, and, most of all, an ineffably and unfailingly comforting watch.

This cosiness will be the hardest thing to replace but perhaps it is also a quality the show needs to shake off if it is to have a future. Television producers are making two things simultaneously these days, a traditional programme to be consumed in full on linear TV or catch-up and a series of punchy moments which will hopefully serve as short-form video online.

BBC Sport may be looking enviously here at CBS’ Champions League show Golazo, Sky Sports’ verbal punditry punch-ups and Lineker’s own podcast The Rest Is Football. Clips from these attract millions of views, which is one route to sustained relevance for Match of the Day.

It is not an approach the show seems to be taking currently. If it is, it has not been very successful. Its last truly viral moment might have been Lineker presenting in his pants eight years ago.

It helps that Mark Chapman is the perfect replacement, close enough to what has come before but 12 years younger than Lineker so likely to bring some freshness and an ability to mix it with his guests in a new way. He would be the consummate safe pair of hands, but also feels like a transitional figure.

The long-term future is almost certainly shoutier and drastically younger. Here Micah Richards looks well placed to make a Lineker-esque transition from pundit to anchor, but he too will be old hat if Chapman presents for even a third of the time Lineker managed.

That means the next-but-one host of Match of the Day is likely to be the presenter on whom the long-term viability of the show rests. After all it is an anachronism, a highlights show in an era when everyone can see the goals as soon as they like.

Who could that person be? Possibly they are still playing now. Probably they are a very different character to their predecessors. Bring on the Emiliano Martínez era.