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November 12, 2024 - 6:00pm
Gary Lineker has announced that he is leaving Match of the Day, and so the country has divided into its usual tribes. Good riddance, woke warrior, says one; another dark day for broadcasting, says the other. Both sides have a point: he was woke, and he was good at his job. Yet each misses the wider significance of Lineker’s departure.
For me and many others, football acts as a form of theatrical escapism that is both an entertainment and a social glue, creating what we might now call a “safe space” to bond with people across the usual social barriers. It has no purpose, as Roger Scruton once remarked of friendship, but is part of what makes life meaningful, weaving its way into our experience of home.
For that reason, I’d rather not have to form any kind of opinion about the presenter of Match of the Day, happy to bathe contentedly in my ignorance of his views about the war in Gaza or how to tackle climate change. More than that, though, I think it will be to the great detriment of our national life if football becomes infected by politics, robbing us of the joy many take from pottering happily with friends, family and strangers in the meaningless fields of our national sport.
To many, of course, this is part of the reason Des Lynam will always be the Platonic ideal of a football presenter: a civilised man’s man who also had an eye for the ladies, football’s Roger Moore. As it happens, I will always hold a candle for Channel 4’s James Richardson as the real heir to Lynam: the national host we never had, who now spends much of his time podcasting — which itself is rather telling.
Still, Lineker was a decent Match of the Day replacement for Lynam in 1999: smart, eloquent and gently amusing, a clean-cut representative for a new era of football. The real problem today is that Lineker has seamlessly transitioned into the new world in which we now live: a world of hyper-politicisation and opinion, dominated by social media and podcasting. Lynam faded nostalgically into our national memory as a man from an older age. Lineker, in contrast, has successfully morphed with the times.
Today, we can look back on the early 2000s as the era of prime Premier League drama, with Lineker handed the job of being its bard. In politics, his equivalent was David Dimbleby, who presided over the most important political events with a calm, apolitical grandeur that has now been lost. “At 20 minutes to 5, we can now say the decision taken in 1975 by this country to join the common market has been reversed by this referendum to leave the EU,” Dimbleby declared in 2016, capturing the historic nature of the vote. Comparing this with the BBC’s last election coverage is utterly dispiriting, as is the fact that he was replaced by Huw Edwards.
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SubscribeSmugness. I think that’s what offends me with Linneker. And he’s not alone. Neville. Carragher. Even Wright is going the same way.
I wonder if football in general is fit to burst. Pumped up on its own self importance.
Too much money. Too much wokery. Too much to say outside of football. Why footballers feel the need to enlighten us with their thoughts on Gaza/environment/gender etc is baffling.
I still can’t forgive them for taking the knee – and the division it provoked.
TMcT’s articles go from strength to strength. What he describes here in this short article reflects what he’s also becoming: someone who articulates our national characteristics and their changing nature in a way that’s not only rare (as with Lynam, Dimbleby) but without which we’d be so much the poorer.
At least, we have the examples he cites, and how others have subsequently varied from them. Once the generation familiar with those names has passed, how will our national character be even understood? Could it be that each step-change in technology will produce it’s own versions?
I’d like also to say something about the term “meaningful” as used in the article. Yes, sport has no inherent “meaning” – although it could be argued that a civilisation without it might find itself subject to more war-like or attritional means of expressing its youthful energies – but the way in which friendships, familial and social occasions are engendered through playing, attending or talking about sport confers huge significance and meaning to the lives of very many people.
It’s also been used as a way of engendering combative hostility, of course. The hooligans of the 70s/80s were an absolute scourge on the game of football and resulted in English clubs being banned from European competition for several years. Then, Lineker came to prominence both as a great goalscorer and urbane presenter before assuming that his position allowed him some greater insight into how our culture should develop.
The events of just last week in Amsterdam also show how a sporting event can cross over into the ‘real world’. Did Lineker condemn those attacking Israeli supporters? I don’t follow social media so he may have done, but if he didn’t, such an omission would be another stain on his record, and one that he’d have a right – perhaps even a duty – to speak out on since it concerned football.
His departure will mark the passing of an era, and i hope that at least through this article, future generations will have some inkling (should it be referenced) of what existed, and why, and what’s being lost.
The tragedy of Gary, that nobody mentions, is that ridiculous chin beard.
I share his inability to grow a proper beard on my cheeks (although, weirdly, I could manage a fine neck beard).
Why has he persisted with those straggly wisps for all this time? The only proper thing to do in that situation is to be clean shaven always.
I don’t like him now, but Gary Lineker will always be bound up with memories of my football-mad mum (a die-hard Derby County fan) who had (and maybe still has) a huge crush on him.
I remember watching him play in the World Cup in 1990 when the England goalie was Peter Shilton. Looong time ago now!
On another note and I don’t know quite why (maybe it’s being from a footie-mad family), but I always got the football enthusiasm vibe off Tom McTague. He just seems like a guy that would seem underdressed without a football scarf.
“… if football becomes infected by politics …”
“The significance of Lineker’s departure is that we are losing this common land where we can all wander free of politics”
Wake up, Tom. Football has been political (generally small “p”, but all too often large “P”) at least since the dawn of professional clubs in the late 19th Century.
And Lineker has politicised Match of the Day still further, though his arrogance, hubris and smugplacency. I for one won’t miss him.
Tragedy, my … eye.
I was massively into football for my whole life until they started taking the knee during Covid. Then I stopped watching it and haven’t looked back – I don’t follow at all and have no idea when my ‘team’ is even playing. Unimaginable only a few year ago.
I promise anyone who does the same, you are missing zero. Like porn, you realise what a cheap thrill is being served up to extract as much attention and money out of you as possible. But, unlike porn, it can be used wisely, with family only. My advice: give up watching it on your own but don’t be puritanical, enjoy games with family when you get the chance.
Gary & Tragedy?