Match Of The Day without Lineker is the end of an era – will the next generation know him only as a podcasting mogul?

No one beneath the age of 25 is aware of Match of the Day with out Gary Lineker.

A TV technology is ending with the Saturday evening sizzling seat being vacated when the Premier League season ends in Would possibly perhaps perhaps, Sky News has been urged.

The appearance of a brand novel director of BBC Sport made this option an increasing number of inevitable as Alex Kay-Jelski is claimed to be shaking up how sport is roofed on air and online.

Few can have anticipated Lineker – the England scoring sensation – reinventing himself as a broadcasting institution, and turning into the inheritor to Des Lynam from 1999.

Few completely can have anticipated his longevity on BBC One and the longevity of the football highlights structure – with clips of video games available online long before MOTD’s post-10pm kick-off.

There might be no doubting how accomplished Lineker has change into in the engaging dwell TV atmosphere.

But off-air conduct grew to change into a rising offer of friction between the BBC hierarchy and its absolute best earner.

Picking to employ his social media platform to dish out affairs of sing demonstrated a social judgment of right and unsuitable.

But those posts – well-known of the Conservatives and educated-Palestinian – despatched out to hundreds of hundreds of followers regarded as if it would battle with social media insurance policies at an organisation that sees itself as a bastion of political neutrality.

One way or the opposite they sparked regarded as one of the largest political furores in BBC history when a comparability of the Tory govt’s asylum protection with Thirties Germany led to him being taken off air final year.

And BBC colleagues walked out in cohesion.

He did not are looking for to assist down and scored a victory, allowing him to explicit views on components as long because it did not flawed into campaigning.

But his views on football additionally introduced about remark with criticism of the England team of workers going beyond anything he would thunder on the BBC.

The expletive ragged about Three Lions performances at Euro 2024 came on his indulge in The Leisure Is Football podcast, producing weeks of protection promoting the sideline.

But the sideline has developed into a noteworthy commercial success with podcasts from Goalhanger dominating the listening chart from politics to history and leisure, beyond his indulge in football shows.

The BBC might well proceed to buy in Goalhanger podcasts after Lineker items his final World Cup for them in 2026.

And almost at the moment a brand novel technology might well well handiest know Lineker, now not as the striker or BBC presenter, nonetheless as the podcasting millionaire.