Gary Lineker was the best football presenter around… but he was out of control and should have gone years ago, writes STEVE RIDER
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- Gary Lineker had presented the BBC's Match of the Day for the past 26 years
- His reputation meant he was able to push limits - he should have gone years ago
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Gary Lineker was given the send-off he deserved by Match of the Day on Sunday.
Anyone who has spent 26 years in the same seat and has become the defining presence on a programme like that deserves to be properly acknowledged when they step aside.
His actions in the last couple of weeks didn’t change the tone of his farewell. But it changed the context — it was Gary leaving the BBC, rather than Gary just leaving Match of the Day.
The tribute at the end on Sunday smacked of having been put together about two months ago, with the assumption that he was going to carry on as part of the BBC football team.
It might have been a little bit uncomfortable for Gary and the circumstances of his exit was the elephant in the room.
If I had been sitting in the chair, I’d have thought, ‘Oh come on, stop this nonsense. Let’s get off the air and have a glass of wine’.
Gary now gets the chance to move on and be himself a bit more if he wants to have a stronger voice on issues.
The first memory I have of working with him was at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. He was acting as a roving reporter, having played for Barcelona and been able to speak Spanish. He was bewildered by the whole thing and we got the impression that this wasn’t for him.
But Gary got his head down and he came in and did a few shifts on Football Focus. We were able to introduce him to a studio environment and point him in the right direction.
When Des Lynam moved on and Gary got the opportunity to present Match of the Day, he was accomplished enough to be able to handle it.
Within the environment of football presentation, where you have your two mates alongside you, you know the subject inside out, you’ve got all the studio and production support, there was no better football presenter around.
But if he strayed out of that environment and it was more seat-of-the-pants live presentation, that wasn’t his strength and you felt a little bit uncomfortable for him.
When I left the BBC in 2005, Gary was a mad keen golfer and he went to see the head of sport within about two hours of me leaving, saying, ‘I want to do the Masters.’ Again, the live environment didn’t really suit him. The production team were minding his back and steering him through everything.
He told the Golf Paper in 2015 that the R&A didn’t like an ex-footballer presenting the Open, but that wasn’t the case at all. I wrote a letter saying that his attack on the R&A was ‘sour and misguided’. It made a big headline and we haven’t spoken since, but I stand by it all.
Gary was always a different member of the team. We were all jobbing journalists, but he came in with a massive reputation.
He had also come in with a huge Walkers crisps deal, which was not part of anyone else’s contract small print.
It was a little bit disruptive, because people were asking, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ The answer from the BBC was, ‘Because Gary has arrived with that and when the contract runs out, it won’t be renewed’. But of course it was —time and time again. It became one of the highest-paid endorsement contracts that any BBC presenter had ever had.
It was also hard not to notice Gary was on a contract worth four times as much as anyone else. It was never justified, which even Gary acknowledged. But it gave the impression he was bulletproof.
I’m very supportive of the humanitarian issues that Gary has spoken up about. We all share those concerns. But if you stray into politics and you are the face of the BBC, you’ve got to be very, very cautious and Gary sort of blundered around that area.
You can say, ‘Well, I am freelance’, but he was probably the No 1 presenter on the BBC. He has his picture in the annual report, for heaven’s sake!
You are working for a very special organisation which has very special requirements and demands. If you feel that does not apply to you, then you are working in the wrong place.
It was horrible to see that Instagram story go out and then Gary say he didn’t really understand what he was sharing. You have to know.
The BBC thought he would get a handle on how he was communicating and didn’t want to rock the boat too much. But it then became papering over the cracks and it was never going to end well. Gary kept pushing the limitations and every time the BBC were seen to be indecisive.
Even with Gary negotiating his exit and saying, ‘I’ll come back for the World Cup and the FA Cup’, no, you can’t do that. It is offensive to the other presenters.
Simply by these compromises, the BBC created this entity which was out of control.
I still talk to a lot of people within the BBC and the misgivings about Gary were shared at numerous levels.
Patience was running out and they eventually took the only route they could.
But they should have taken it two years ago. And the initiative should have come from Gary.
He should have said, ‘I want to speak on issues that are going to make the BBC uncomfortable,
I want to continue doing that, I will step aside’.
If that had happened two years ago, there would have been so much more respect from his fellow professionals and everyone within the BBC.
Steve Rider was speaking to David Coverdale
