Voice of social causes, Lineker provokes crisis at the BBC – 03/12/2023 – Sport

In a packed La Bombonera, Gary Lineker smiled as he heard the crowd singing that “el que no salta es un inglés”. Next to him in the box, Diego Maradona repeated, shouting, that the one who didn’t jump was an Englishman.

Not just any Brit who, with the memory of the Falklands War (1982) living in the Argentine’s memory, would become friends with the greatest idol of the South American nation.

In the eye of the hurricane and responsible for an unprecedented controversy at the most famous public broadcaster in the world, Gary Winston Lineker, 62, escapes the former football player mold. Top scorer in the 1986 World Cup, historic striker for Tottenham Hotspur and burned at Barcelona by Johan Cruyff, he became an informal spokesman for social causes.

His platforms are 8.8 million Twitter followers and the fact that he is one of the most recognizable faces on TV in the UK. He has hosted Match of the Day since 1999, the most watched and traditional sports program in the country, which has been on the air for 59 years.

Lineker caused a crisis at the station when he compared, in a post on Twitter, the immigration policy to be implemented by the British government with Nazi Germany.

He was removed from the program by the management of the BBC, a state-owned channel. In solidarity, other former players who work as commentators warned that they would not participate in the broadcast this Saturday (11). Mark Chapman, the best-known voice at 5 Live, the conglomerate’s news radio, failed to show up for work. Active athletes refused to give post-game interviews to the broadcaster.

Match of the Day showed the best moments of the round, but without opening vignette, narrations, interviews and analysis. Only the bids of the matches with ambient sound. This had never happened.

“I think that being a former soccer player, what I write draws more attention because sports people don’t usually take a stand. I’m interested [em política], although it is not a candidate for anything. I don’t support any political party, but that doesn’t stop me from defending some causes that are important to me. I write what I think,” he told Sheetat the end of 2017.

Weeks later, Lineker would host the group draw for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

It is not unheard of to get involved in controversy because of your opinions. But it is the first time he has received anything like a suspension, although the BBC does not use the word. The broadcaster claimed that his contractor broke the company’s guidelines on how to behave on social media and asked the former player to apologize for the post and delete it. He refused to do so.

Instead of getting ready to present the show, he went to the King Power Stadium this Saturday to see Leicester, his favorite team, face Chelsea in the Premier League.

Lineker had already positioned himself in the past against policies of the Conservative Party, in power in the United Kingdom since 2010.

He was one of the voices against Brexit, the country’s exit from the European Union, confirmed in a plebiscite held in 2016. He repeatedly criticized England’s refusal to receive refugees from conflict zones. He publicly backed Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford’s campaign for the government to subsidize more school meals for underprivileged children during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“When fleeing wars, refugees can’t carry much. But refugees bring so much to their new communities: hopes, skills, talent, traditions and much more,” he wrote.

Revealed by Leicester in 1978, he passed by Everton before being signed by Barcelona in 1986. He scored 21 goals in 41 appearances in his first season. He won the 1988 King’s Cup and the 1989 European Cup Winners’ Cup. He left because Dutch coach Johan Cruyff believed that the quintessential striker was not suited to his game scheme. He proceeded to climb him out of position, on the right end.

Lineker returned to England in 1989 and won the 1991 Cup with Tottenham Hotspur. Before retiring from the pitch, he played for Nagoya Grampus (JAP).

His biggest memory for the fans is with the shirt of the national team. He scored 10 goals in World Cups, six of them in 1986, when he was the tournament’s top scorer. He was a key part of the team that reached the semi-finals in 1990, England’s best World Cup campaign since the 1966 title and only equaled in 2018.

Unlike many of his fellow cast members, including Terry Butcher, Peter Shilton and John Barnes, he has never held a grudge over Maradona’s handball in the quarter-finals in Mexico 27 ​​years ago. He always said he understood the genius of the rival number 10.

Hired by the BBC’s entertainment sector, Lineker has a salary of 1.35 million pounds a year (about R$ 8.5 million at current prices), one of the highest in the company. He also presented programs for BT Sports, a private broadcaster in the United Kingdom, and has sporadic appearances on channels such as Al Jazeera, from Qatar, and NSBC, from the United States.

The presenter was accused of receiving his salary from companies abroad to avoid paying taxes. In the UK, they can exceed 50%.

The controversy over his tweets and the suspension also opened up an internal struggle for influence at the BBC. Despite having independence rules, the broadcaster, a public TV reference in the world, is not immune to political disputes.

The current chairman of the state-owned conglomerate, chosen by the government and approved by Parliament Richard Sharp, donated £600,000 (R$3.8 million today) to the Conservative Party. When he was a banker, he helped oil an £800,000 (£5m) personal loan to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

There is also an old battle in the halls of government over the license fee. The money, which sustains the BBC, is paid by everyone who has a television at home. It’s R$ 998 per year and not making the payment or declaring falsely that you don’t own a TV was considered a crime until the beginning of the pandemic.

Part of the Conservative Party wants to extinguish the fee and for the broadcaster to seek money in the market, with the sale of advertisements, like other conventional channels.