‘Politics enters everything ... all I did was ask for a bit of empathy’

The presenter reflects on the ‘disproportionate’ BBC furore, welcoming refugees into his home and getting a standing ovation in his local M&S

Gary Lineker is squeezed into the back of a Fiat Punto whizzing through Italian streets. All sharp, frantic, narrow turns, something about the scene feels familiar, echoes of the opening to Asif Kapadia’s film on Maradona, and from behind the driver going through the gears there’s a grin. “I’ve never felt so close to Diego,” the former England striker says, voice just audible over the rattle of cobbles. “If only it was Naples.”

Instead, this is Rome. Lineker has come to receive a Sport and Human Rights award from Amnesty International. Here, not sticking to sport is cause for commendation, not criticism, still less punishment. “A lot of people like footballers having a voice, using their platform; when they don’t, it’s often because they disagree with the opinion,” he says, as the city speeds by. “It’s interesting to be in Italy for this, with the government they have now.” There’s a pause, a laugh. “I doubt they know about it. It’s a nice gesture. I’m sure the recent furore brought me here.”

Furore is a good word; if there is a recurring theme as Lineker talks, it is a kind of bafflement that it all became so big. How a tweet – you know the one – led to, well, that.

To a media frenzy, his suspension from the BBC, a mass walkout and Match of the Day’s worst episode ever. “I’m still surprised; it was strange and surreal,” he says, but then it was also the perfect storm, an opportunity to attack the corporation and him. “A kind of vendetta,” he calls it.

On 7 March Lineker tweeted a response to Suella Braverman’s presentation of her “stop the boats” bill, calling it “beyond awful”, then called some of the language “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. And that, he thought, was that.

It wasn’t. “I woke, got a coffee, opened up my phone,” he recalls. “Two hundred and thirty-seven

Whatsapp messages. Fuck! What’s happened? Is this a major scandal? Is it one of the kids? I opened one and saw the Daily Mail front page. I went: ‘Pfff, that’s all it is.’ And that’s how I felt throughout. I kept thinking: ‘Am I missing something? Why is this six days of reporters outside my door, being on the front pages of every single newspaper every single day? This is nuts!’ It’s so disproportionate to what I did.”

What he had done, the accusation went, was break BBC impartiality rules, although as a sports presenter and a freelancer, they may not have applied to him. “And,” Lineker says of the corporation’s director-general, “when Tim Davie first kind of thrust the guidelines upon us, I had said there were two areas where I wasn’t shifting: climate change and the refugee crisis. I said to him: ‘When we first sat down, you agreed.’ I thought they were humanitarian issues rather than political ones, although politics enters everything.

“All I was really doing was asking for empathy, a bit of compassion towards people in a perilous plight, having to flee their country. Imagine if it was London and for some inexplicable reason, a bombing or whatever, you had to flee; imagine what it takes to leave your home with just what you carry on your back. It’s also about language. They use words like swarm and invasion, criminals, rapists. They say ‘stop the boats’ but there are people on those boats. Those are human beings and it seems we have to remind ourselves that sometimes. The vast majority have been through absolute hell.

“When I played I was quite cold. These weren’t issues we talked about then, unlike today; I’m so proud of how our players behave now. I think I’m quite a different human now. You get older, have kids, things change: you read more, educate yourself. I don’t think there’s suddenly a moment when I switched, although I think back to the refugee crisis in Greece, people drowning, thinking: ‘God, this is so awful.’ But you get a section of society that shows no compassion.

“Look, I still live my life, I still may be selfish in some areas, but I have other concerns now.” There’s a smile, a flash of rebellion. “Also, the more I’m prodded, the more I go in the other direction. That’s always been my personality. As soon as you support refugees, people poke you. ‘You house them, then.’ ‘You’re out of touch with reality.’ OK, right. I will, then. I’ve got room.

“Somebody did the usual tweet: ‘Stick to football, you wouldn’t have them in your house.’ Underneath someone replied: ‘Gary, you might actually be interested in this’ with a link to the charity Refugees At Home, so I clicked. There were various options and I thought: ‘Actually, yeah, I can do that.’

I filled it in, ticked the boxes. They visit you, check you’re OK, check the house. They called: ‘We have someone for you to host, a guy called Rasheed.’

“He’s from Balochistan, which doesn’t really exist any more: sandwiched between Pakistan and Iran, it got divided up in the war. Lots of people went missing, his friends. He managed to get out, he’s bright, he’s studying law now at university in west London. He wants to return and try to get his country back. He was great. It was exceptionally positive for my boys: they’re entitled, they grew up in good circumstances, and he gave them perspective. Most nights I cooked for him but he would cook for the boys sometimes. They became very close.”

“The second was a young Turkish lad called …”

‘As a player I was quite cold but I’m a different human now ... you have to educate yourself ’

Lineker stops. “Actually, better I don’t say his name. It’s quite a story. He’s a super-bright kid who quite literally wants to be a rocket scientist. Around 17, 18, in Istanbul, he joins the army to supplement his studies. One day they gather 400 cadets for a practice mission. But it wasn’t a practice mission: it was a military coup. Against [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan. He had no idea. They were thrown into jail for 18 months, then a judge released them, but the government changed it back. About a hundred got out the country.

“He’s just a kid, he’s done nothing wrong, just followed instructions. He was in our Home Office system for 18 months and said that was worse than jail in Turkey at times, particularly the place in Kent. Pretty grim for him. He’s a really good kid. He got a full scholarship at Bristol University. He wants to work for Nasa! But the one refugee who commits a crime is the one we’re told about. Lots of Brits commit crimes. And there’s no such thing really as an illegal asylum seeker: pleading asylum is a legal right. People misrepresent it and exacerbate the rhetoric, the language.

“We would watch football together even though Rasheed had zero interest,” Lineker recalls. “Actually both didn’t like football.

But I got them watching anyway. I think they were thinking: this guy’s a bit overexcited.”

One night, for the first time in three decades, he sat and watched Match of the Day from home, suspended by the BBC. His co-presenters Ian Wright and Alan Shearer had refused to go on and soon everyone followed suit: commentators, staff, players. The show was short, stripped down, not Match of the Day at all, although the usual suspects queued up to claim it was great without the woke lefties.

L‘I cried in the back of a taxi when Alan Shearer told me he would boycott Match of the Day’

ineker laughs. “Well, the viewing figures were bigger – for two minutes, then everyone switched off. I put it on too. I didn’t know they weren’t even going to play the music, but everyone had been massively supportive. It was an amazing few days, genuinely moving. A bit overwhelming. It started with Ian Wright pulling out, then 20 minutes later Alan Shearer did the same – it might have been slightly harder for him – and it was ‘wow, wow’.

“We have a Whatsapp group and I’d said: ‘I’ve got a feeling they might take me off Match of the Day because I’m not shifting.’ I’d been asked to make a statement but insisted I didn’t think I had anything to apologise for. I still think that. Wrighty said: ‘If they do, there’s no way I’m doing the show.’ I know he has strong convictions but when he actually tweeted it, I was like: pfff … Then Alan did it. I cried. I genuinely cried. I was in the back of a taxi in tears, moved. I was very emotional. I told them I could never thank them enough.

“It was everyone: the production staff were amazing. The crew, the guys operating the cameras, the commentators. They didn’t have to do it. Extraordinary. Even the public. I walked into M&S and got a round of applause, which was really fucking weird. It was so embarrassing. It was like: ‘I haven’t really done anything.’”

When Lineker was reinstated, the BBC backing down, the former BBC and Football Association chief Greg Dyke suggested he had won 5-0. “I didn’t feel like it was a win,” the presenter says. “We’re on the same side. I just thought the whole thing was unnecessary. I said that to Tim at the end: ‘I don’t bear grudges, we’re the same team. It’s the BBC. Let’s forget it.’ He was good like that; he did what was needed to get back on track.”

The irony is the accusation of Lineker playing politics was so eminently political and senior BBC appointments are made by the government, which he believes should not be the case. “There was pressure coming from somewhere. You have to be careful of trying to appease the hard right who want to defund the BBC anyway and alienating the people who actually love the BBC. It’s a difficult one because of the licence fee, but we should push what great value we offer. That’s hard because you get the ‘we pay your wages’ thing and nowadays they publish the salaries and I’m at the top of that.

“That does make me uncomfortable. I’m in a genre that pays really well, that delivers the biggest audiences, where people fight for your services. I’m unique in presenting having played at the top level and worked really hard to get here. But can I justify my salary against a nurse? No. Obviously not. That’s not how it works, though. Could I have earned more elsewhere? Absolutely. But I’ve always loved working with the BBC. It’s a rocky ride because of the love-hate relationship some have with the corporation.

“I understand the whole impartiality thing but they got it wrong. They recognised that and corrected it. Some people will always attack the BBC at every opportunity, including some newspapers. Sometimes we don’t stand up and fight our cause. Sometimes we live in too much fear of what people think, especially people who’ll never love the BBC regardless.”

Time then to stick to football. “Do we have to?” Lineker asks, laughing; that’s even more painful with Leicester’s relegation. First though, to the other end, where he says the debate over Manchester City being the best team ever is

“a bit clickbaity: it’s a bit silly and certainly premature before they’ve even won a Champions League”.

“But,” he says, “they are playing sensational football and have an extraordinary coach. People worry about having a league dominated by one team for ever because of their wealth but I don’t see that because I think it’s Pep doing it. They’ll find it very, very hard when he goes. How he improves players is remarkable, how innovative he is. He’s special. I’ve never seen a team reach the byline as much. And they don’t do that by beating players: it’s ‘in there, in there, thread it through, and he’s in’. Brilliant. I used to think: ‘God, if they get a proper striker.’ [Erling] Haaland’s perfect. I look at that team and imagine playing up front for them. Oh my God!

“I don’t feel conflicted with City in terms of how they play. But you have to take into consideration how they bought those players. It’s ‘only’ charges for now, they’ll probably get very powerful lawyers and this could go on. But it will inevitably be a kind of shadow. It’s a lot of charges brought by the Premier League, who wouldn’t want to do one of their own. I’d be worried if a team won 17 titles in 20 but I don’t think we’ll get that, not least because we’ve got more than one state-owned club, which I don’t believe in – but I’m afraid that train has left the station.”

So have Leicester, alas. “We struggled in the pandemic. The owners are [in] duty free and took a massive hit. We needed to recruit but couldn’t. They were actually doing all right before the World Cup but since then confidence is shot and we’ve been hopeless. I would have stuck with Brendan [Rodgers]: he had finished fifth twice, ninth, won the FA Cup. He gets an unfair press. He’s a really good coach and had earned the right to fail, to try to keep us up. There was a moment’s panic and they fired him without really having a plan.

“Basically we’re going back to being Leicester City,” Lineker continues as the Punto pulls up for the presentation on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, where an Italian waits on the pavement with an England shirt to sign; light blue, 1990, when the World Cup was here. “I said to my boys, who were distraught: ‘At least we had that experience and it was miraculous.’ I never thought I would see us win the FA Cup in my lifetime, let alone the league. And we’ll always have that. We’ll be in the Championship, probably come back, win more games. But yeah, it’s grim. Honestly, it’s silly. I’m an adult! I watch a game and genuinely get emotional about it and you think: ‘Come on, you’re 62 and you still care about your team’s football results.’ It just never goes away.”