England football legend Lineker capitalises on the BBC’s own goal over the migrant crisis

Gary Lineker scored within 10 minutes of England’s opening match of the Italia ‘90 World Cup. But that feat is not what social media remembers of the former striker’s contribution to the Stadio Sant’Elia turf.

Until last week, frequent replies to Lineker’s prolific tweets involved a tired and unoriginal mockery of the pro-turned-presenter's unfortunate on-pitch accident, which saw him scrambling his behind along the grass in a very public clean-up operation.

Despite the now-Match of the Day frontman scoring thrice more in the tournament as England were defeated at the semi-final stage, a common social media trend of repeating jokes and memes until they rapidly stop being funny and phase out of memory did not quite apply in Lineker’s case.

He eventually opened up on the incident in a BBC Radio 5 Live interview as ‘the most horrendous experience of my life’, although quickly followed this up with a typically Lineker-esque quick-witted assertion that ‘I never found so much space in a game than I did that night.’

Lineker responds to the toilet-themed Twitter trolling in 2014.

Perhaps football can never forget the footballer’s lowest moment. But this weekend has shown that football will stand by its staunchest of spokespeople even if non-sporting corporate vultures will not.

Match of the Day is popular precisely because Lineker and his ex-England pals can laugh at their personal nightmares just like the kind of pub banter that typifies the English (British?) football fan. On how many occasions has Lineker teased Alan Shearer on his baldness, or his lack of FA Cup victory? Do you think it’s taken to heart, or is it an effective tool to endear the screen personalities to the audience? Because the reality is that they are just like us – we probably all have a toilet-related anecdote in the pub chat repertoire.

Lineker once stood up to his word and opened an episode of BBC’s most watched regularly-scheduled programme in his underwear. That is commitment to the cause, and reflects some the cultural meanings of football in Britain – it's supposed to be fun, often you can’t predict the result correctly, and it’s full of character.

This weekend he stood up to his word again – and his morals, his ideals and his righteousness – and defeated the senseless censoring of his authentic humanity, by receiving a powerful display of allyship from the English footballing faithful. The tangible reaction in support of Lineker’s views on the government’s current immigration policy is testament to both the validity of his claims and the quietly widespread disagreement with the barbarism of the policy itself.

Lineker is not the only England football superstar to have taken on the political establishment in recent memory. In 2020, Marcus Rashford pulled out the political equivalent of a Cruyff turn to force the UK government into a u-turn of stark embarrassment over the issue of child hunger and free school meals.

Since the BBC’s decision to effectively suspend Lineker from presenting duties last week, debate has raged about the sheer relevance of the impartiality of a freelance journalist using an unrelated social media platform to espouse a personal opinion outside of his contracted BBC working hours. Conversely, however, the incident appears to have revealed more about the ‘hidden’ political slant of the broadcasting corporation than anything else. We don’t need VAR to record this one as an own goal.

In classic social media style, some of the positive response towards Lineker’s plight uses the ‘whataboutery’ technique to highlight the ridiculous sanctimoniousness of the BBC’s lack of action regarding unsavoury tweets from other featured stars on the network:

Letter from Dawn Butler MP highlighting other cases of impartiality from BBC stars.

As Dawn Butler’s (Labour MP for Brent Central) public letter shows, ‘whataboutery’ can be a slam dunk (or rather, scoring into an open goal) when the evidence of hypocrisy is so blatant.

Despite the weekend of presenter/commentator/pundit-less football coverage on the BBC, Lineker has survived his position and indeed emerged victorious in this match of ‘footballing figure versus the political establishment’. The result has surely reminded those in power who claim to have Britain’s best interests at heart (whilst they proverbially commit some blatant studs-up tackles on their opponents and teammates) that politics and football do mix in reality – and football played this one much more fairly. This is not surprising considering Lineker’s exemplary disciplinary record in the sport.

Following the BBC’s ‘deal’ to reinstate the headline celebrity of Oscars week (read: they know they screwed up), Lineker once again showed his ability to capitalise on a golden opportunity by tweeting that ‘however difficult the last few days have been, it simply doesn’t compare to having to flee your home from persecution or war to seek refuge in a land far away. It’s heartwarming to have seen the empathy towards their plight from so many of you.’ No personal accidents this time.

I cannot find a ‘shat on’ reply to this tweet – perhaps the tired trolls took a day off to respect the sentiment and the man who expressed it. Or maybe they were just too busy commenting on Monday’s Extinction Rebellion ‘cut the crap’ sewage stunt.

Written by Francis Overton for Lions Under The Arch, 14th March 2023