Gary Lineker has revealed he had to improvise during his final Match of the Day after he experienced an unfortunate first during his last show for the BBC.
The former England striker was always set to step down from the highlights show on Sunday, but his departure from the corporation was brought forward 12 months following a social media row.
The 64-year-old held back tears during Sunday’s programme and a day later he reflected on his final Match of the Day, which he had presented since 1999, and explained how he lost his script at the last moment.
“I was a bit emotional last night, but I’m fine, I’m good and thank you both for your very kind words,” Lineker said on his podcast The Rest is Football alongside Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, the pundits during his final show.
“I must say when they played the montage, obviously I knew something was coming but I didn’t know what it was at all and I was struggling to keep myself, especially when I saw my boys.
“Thankfully that wasn’t the last clip because I had gone at that point and I needed time to get myself together and try to get through the end of the show.
“It’s weird isn’t it? I’ve presented it for 25, 26 years and I always finish with the Premier League table and a closing line, which again I did last night. But for the first time ever because of everything that was going on, I completely lost what we call the copy, which is basically the written form of what I read out over the tables.
“That is written by the subs, it needs to be accurate obviously for all the things, you can’t make any mistakes and for the first time in 26 years I couldn’t find it. And it wasn’t there, so I just busk.
“There were a couple of tears, I was fighting it back a bit with my closing lines, but yeah, and big thank you actually to Richard Hughes, he is the (Match of the Day) editor.
“Rich is brilliant, he’s the best in the business and getting that montage together was a brilliant thing.”
Lineker’s departure from the BBC follows a row after he shared a social media post about Zionism, which featured a depiction of a rat, historically an antisemitic insult.
He issued an unreserved apology over the post, as it was confirmed he would leave his presenting role at the BBC early.
Lineker had planned to stay on at the BBC and present live coverage of the FA Cup and 2026 World Cup before he acknowledged it was “best for all concerned” he exited early.
