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Opinion How a rat-emoji cost veteran football presenter Gary Lineker his BBC job

This was not the first time Lineker made an error in judgment, a trait antithetical to his on-field persona, where his strikes were precise and measured.

Three decades after his last game, Gary Lineker finally received the first red card of his life. (NYT File)

Sandip G

New DelhiMay 28, 2025 05:56 PM IST First published on: May 28, 2025 at 05:54 PM IST

In his storied football career that spanned two decades, British footballer Gary Lineker never received a sanction, neither a yellow nor a red card, a remarkable achievement for someone who had turned up for 573 games for five clubs and 80 times for England, netted 331 goals and bagged the Golden Boot in the 1986 World Cup.

But three decades after his last competitive game, twenty-six years and 45,086 shows into hosting the “Match of the Day” show on BBC, he was red-carded from the programme for his alleged antisemitic comments on social media. He apologised for both his post as well as his ignorance and indiscretion, but it was a step too late to salvage his proposed last dance during the World Cup next year.

It was inevitable, because while he was sagacious in the studio, he managed to attract a steady stream of controversy with his politically opinionated statements.

An opinion box

His latest faux pas that expedited his BBC exit was him reposting a material titled “Zionism explained in less than 2 mins” with a rat emoji on Instagram. The post was originally sent from a Palestine lobby account, English media reported. When outrage escalated, he apologised, saying, “I would never knowingly share anything antisemitic. It goes against everything I believe in.”

In 1927, the rat became an antisemitic image after Der Stürmer, Nazi Germany’s most influential propaganda sheet, published a cover page of Nazis gassing rats with the caption. “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish once more.”

But this was not the first time he made an error in judgment, a trait antithetical to his on-field persona, where his strikes were precise and measured.

From Brexit and the government’s asylum policies to BBC editorial stands and sports-washing in the Qatar World Cup, he has been vocal about every cause under the sun. While most of them conformed to the invisible lines of sensitivity, he trampled this on occasion, spurring the BBC to devise editorial guidelines for personal use of social media. He explained his rationale in an interview with The Guardian: “Twitter has sparked my public politicisation. Until Twitter emerged, I never voiced my views. Politics at the moment is a shambles. It’s divided and it’s tribal and it’s depressing.”

The bigger impact on the BBC

For the BBC, axing their star anchor, the costliest on the BBC’s payroll, is hardly an issue since they could hire another luminary using their financial resources. Neither is it about Lineker being jobless. He has a popular podcast and already has a host of offers on his table.

There is a larger concern about the once (perceived) benchmark of objective journalism leaning towards rampant censoring and intolerance to anything against the government, or the wider global issues, embodied by the indiscretion in handling the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Lineker’s dismissal comes at a time when the credibility and neutrality of the BBC had come under fire after it pulled from the air the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, after it emerged that its narrator, a 13-year-old, was the son of the deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas government. Incidentally, he had vociferously protested against removing the aforementioned documentary from iPlayer as well as the government’s increasingly stringent immigration laws.

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A few years ago, political commentator Peter Oborne’s columns were stopped because he wrote a scathing piece against the Boris Johnson government.

Shots on show

When his childhood club Leicester City lifted the Premier League title in 2016, a fairy tale unmatched in the league, he came to the post-match show shirtless, in just white bloomers, ripping apart his favoured style code of a grey jacket and white buttoned-up shirt. He was forced to strip after a prediction midway through the season where he proclaimed to “do the MOTD in undies” if his childhood club Leicester City, won the Premier League. So they did, and the club’s greatest product kept his word. Well, nearly.

More scandalously, he pulled out a live “sex-noise prank” during an FA Cup match between Wolves and Liverpool in 2023. He was performing his hosting duties when pornographic noises were heard on the TV, with no one knowing where it was coming from. Lineker revealed on social media that the noise had come from a phone stuck to the couch, with celebrity prankster ‘Jarvo’, the pitch invader during cricket matches, taking credit for it. However, he had to apologise thrice to the Corporation executives.

But for all his attempts to be funny, his reflections on the game were without flourishes, a more accurate reflection of his playing days.

A lethal goal-scorer

In the box, he was always at the right place at the right time. He was not a great dribbler, header, passer or even striker of the ball, and his goals are more memorable for their effect than execution. But he had an immaculate sense of the goal. He roved between the lines, hid behind the defenders, sped past them with explosive pace to receive crosses and slapped/tapped/nicked the ball past the goalkeeper.

It was the fate of his career—he was always at the wrong place at the wrong time to amass trophies. Despite netting 283 goals in 573 games, split between Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur and Nagoya Grampus Eight of the Japanese J-1 League, and winning a treasure chest of individual awards, most notably the Golden Boot in the 1986 World Cup, he never hoisted a league trophy or a European Championship.

But three decades after his last game, he finally received the first red card of his life.