No one under the age of 25 knows Match of the Day without Gary Lineker.
A TV era is ending with the Saturday night hot seat being vacated when the Premier League season ends in May, Sky News has been told.
The arrival of a new director of BBC Sport made this decision increasingly inevitable as Alex Kay-Jelski is said to be shaking up how sport is covered on air and online.
Image: Gary Lineker next to the FA Cup trophy in January of this year. Pic: PA
Few could have anticipated Lineker – the England scoring sensation – reinventing himself as a broadcasting institution, and becoming the heir to Des Lynam from 1999.
Few certainly could have anticipated his longevity on BBC One and the longevity of the football highlights format – with clips of games available online long before MOTD’s post-10pm kick-off.
There is no doubting how accomplished Lineker has become in the challenging live TV environment.
But off-air conduct became a growing source of friction between the BBC hierarchy and its highest earner.
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Choosing to use his social media platform to dish out political views demonstrated a social conscience.
But those posts – critical of the Conservatives and pro-Palestinian – sent out to millions of followers seemed to conflict with social media policies at an organisation that sees itself as a bastion of political neutrality.
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Gary Lineker to leave BBC’s MOTD
Ultimately they sparked one of the biggest political furores in BBC history when a comparison of the Tory government’s asylum policy with 1930s Germany led to him being taken off air last year.
And BBC colleagues walked out in solidarity.
Image: Presenter Gary Lineker and pundit Alan Shearer, returning to TV screens following Lineker’s row with the BBC over impartiality last year. Pic: PA
He didn’t want to back down and scored a victory, allowing him to express views on issues as long as it did not cross into campaigning.
But his views on football also caused concern with criticism of the England team going beyond anything he would say on the BBC.
The expletive used about Three Lions performances at Euro 2024 came on his own The Rest Is Football podcast, generating weeks of coverage promoting the sideline.
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But the sideline has developed into a huge commercial success with podcasts from Goalhanger dominating the listening chart from politics to history and entertainment, beyond his own football shows.
The BBC could continue to buy in Goalhanger podcasts after Lineker presents his last World Cup for them in 2026.
And soon a new generation might only know Lineker, not as the striker or BBC presenter, but as the podcasting millionaire.
A Strictly Come Dancing star has been arrested on suspicion of rape.
The unnamed man, who is in his 30s, was also detained over a separate allegation of “non-consensual intimate image abuse”.
The Met Police said an arrest was made in east London on Friday in a joint investigation with HertfordshireConstabulary, following a “third-party allegation of sexual and drug-related offences”.
It is understood the arrest is not related to the upcoming production of Strictly Come Dancing – the 23rd series, which is in the rehearsal stage and is due to launch in September.
“On Friday 22 August, officers arrested a man in his 30s in east London on suspicion of rape and non-consensual intimate image abuse,” a spokesperson for the Met said in a statement.
The investigation is in its early stages and inquiries are ongoing, the spokesperson added.
The man was released on bail on Saturday until a date in November, the force said, according to BBC News.
Hertfordshire Constabulary did not add anything further.
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “It would not be appropriate to comment on an ongoing police investigation.”
Taylor Swift has announced she is getting married to her NFL star boyfriend Travis Kelce.
The pop star and Kansas City Chiefs tight end shared the news in a joint post on Instagram, with the caption: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
The announcement was liked more than 1.7 million times just over 30 minutes after it was posted.
Image: Pic: Instagram / @taylorswift
Swiftand Kelcestarted their relationship in July 2023, after the three-time Super Bowl winner said on his podcast New Heights that he tried and failed to meet the singer at her Eras Tour concert in Kansas City.
Rumours grew that the couple were dating after Swift was spotted at a number of Chiefs games. On her seventh time in the stands, she brought her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, along.
Kelce told the Wall Street Journal in November 2023: “There were definitely people she knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said]: ‘Yo! Did you know he was coming [to the Eras Tour]?’
“I had somebody playing Cupid… She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out.”
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From January: Taylor cheers on Travis after Chiefs win
Earlier this month, Swift appeared on Kelce’s podcast, New Heights, and announced her 12th album, titled The Life Of A Showgirl.
Speaking to her now-fiance and his brother Jason Kelce, Swift said it was inspired by the Eras Tour – and also talked about Travis’s attempt at meeting her two years ago.
While she said his plan to give her his number on a friendship bracelet was a “wild, romantic gesture,” she joked he “didn’t do any proper logistical planning” and thought he would be allowed backstage.
“Because he knows the elevator lady, he thought he could talk to her about just getting down to my dressing room,” she added. “That’s how it works in 1973.”
Sky News culture and entertainment reporter Gemma Peplowsaid after her globe-trotting tour and a swathe of re-releases over recent years, the new album cemented Swift’s reputation “as the hardest-working star in pop”.
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Despite rumours he would retire after losing this year’s Super Bowl, Kelce will play for the Kansas City Chiefs again this season.
He told GQ magazine his on-field performances “slipped a little bit” as he started acting, and added: “I’m just saying that my work ethic is such that I have so much pride in how I do things that I never want the product to tail off, and I feel like these past two years haven’t been to my standard.”
A 16-year-old has been convicted in Germany for supporting a foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Austria last year.
The teenager, named Mohammad A, who cannot be fully identified under Germany’sprivacy laws, was convicted of preparing a serious act of violence and supporting a terrorist act of violence abroad.
He was handed a suspended 18-month sentence on Tuesday. According to the court, he made a “comprehensive confession” at his trial, which was held behind closed doors because of his age.
German judges found that the defendant, a Syrian national then aged 14, supported the ideology of the Islamic State group at the time.
The court heard he was also in contact via social media with a young man in Austriawho planned to attack a Swiftconcert in Vienna, had sent him a video with bomb-building instructions, and organised contact with an IS member.
All three of Swift’s concerts at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium were cancelled in August last year after a terror plot was uncovered by authorities.
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Swiftie on cancelled Vienna show
Concert organisers had expected up to 65,000 fans inside the stadium at each concert and as many as 30,000 onlookers outside.
Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of the directorate of state security and intelligence, added at the time that the suspect was “clearly radicalised in the direction of the Islamic State and thinks it is right to kill infidels”.
Swift later called the decision to cancel her shows in Austria “devastating,” and said: “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.
“But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”