Gary Lineker opened his final edition of Match of the Day with a joke at his own expense on Sunday evening.
The former England striker announced last Monday he was standing down from BBC presenting duties after the airing of the highlights programme on the final day of the Premier League season.
Lineker, 64, had long intended Sunday to be his last Match of the Day, but he was planning to stay on to front the corporation’s live coverage of the FA Cup and 2026 World Cup.
He brought forward his departure following a social media row in which he shared a post about Zionism featuring a depiction of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic trope.
The long-serving Lineker, the BBC’s highest-paid presenter, apologised unreservedly for the post but said it was “best for all concerned” if he left completely.
He appeared to allude to this as he opened Sunday’s programme, before pivoting to refer to the battle to secure the top-five places in the Premier League.
Lineker said: “It wasn’t meant to end this way… but with the title race over and the relegation places confirmed, the Champions League was all we had left to talk about about.”
The programme had also been preceded with a montage of Lineker’s on-field footballing highlights, and an archive clip of him as a presenter saying “the end of an era”, before the regular opening credits.
Lineker has presented Match of the Day since 1999 and has also fronted the BBC’s coverage of other major sporting events, including the 2012 London Olympics.
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In March 2023 he was temporarily suspended from BBC duties amid an impartiality row over comments he made criticising the then-government’s new asylum policy.
That in turn led to a boycott of MOTD by other contributors, leading to an edition of the programme being screened featuring brief match highlights only, with no commentary or punditry.
In February of this year he was also among 500 other high-profile figures who signed an open letter calling on the BBC to rebroadcast a documentary, Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, to BBC iPlayer.
The latest controversy brought renewed pressure on his position.
Lineker said he had not seen an emoji of a rat in the post he shared and said he was “against all forms of racism”, including antisemitism, “which I absolutely abhor”.
Nevertheless, he said in a video message that he felt it “best for all concerned that I step down from BBC presenting duties altogether and not do next season’s FA Cup or World Cup”.
Match of the Day is one of the BBC’s top-performing programmes and the corporation retains the rights to continue showing Premier League highlights until the end of the 2028-29 season.
From next season, the programme’s presenting duties will be shared by experienced sports broadcasters Gabby Logan, Kelly Cates and Mark Chapman.
