Gary Lineker hints BBC wanted him out, says opposing 'mass murder of children' in Gaza not an impartiality issue

Retired footballer and BBC sports pundit Gary Lineker has suggested that the British public broadcaster had wanted him to leave its flagship football highlights show Match of the Day.

Lineker, who had become increasingly vocal about human rights issues, including the UK's treatment of asylum seekers and Israel's war on Gaza, is set to leave the the programme after more than 25 years.

In an interview with BBC journalist Amol Rajan, Lineker  spoke about his departure from MOTD and was asked about his political statements.

When asked why he would want to leave the show, Lineker said: "Well perhaps they want me to leave … there was a sense of that."

"I think it was their preference that I didn’t do Match of the Day for one more year so they could bring in new people, so it’s slightly unusual that I would do the FA Cup and World Cup but to be honest it’s a scenario that suits me perfectly."

Lineker, who has featured on the show since 1999, was briefly suspended in 2023 after criticising the then Conservative government's asylum policies, which he called "immeasurably cruel" in a tweet. 

The policy Lineker referred to was one in which asylum seekers would be returned and blocked from the UK if they were found to have used "illegal routes" – mainly in reference to the perilous Channel crossings undertaken by thousands to reach Britain.

Lineker also compared the policy to "Germany in the 30s".

“I don’t regret saying [the comments] publicly, because I was right – what I said, it was accurate – so not at all in that sense," he said, referring to his tweet.

The interview with Rajan also touched on Israel's war on Gaza, with Lineker challenging the journalist's understanding of "impartiality" at the BBC.

"I know where I stand on this... What's going on there (Gaza), the mass murder of thousands of children is probably something we should have an opinion on," Lineker said.

Rajan responded that the BBC "as a whole needs to be impartial about it", to which Lineker replied: "Why? It needs to be factual."

The journalist then pressed the point that the BBC, as a public broadcaster, needs to be "impartial about conflict", prompting the former footballer to highlight that the corporation did not feign impartiality on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Rajan then stated the Israeli position, which says that the brutal war on the enclave, which has so far killed over 51,000 Palestinians, "is a response to the slaughter and capture of innocent Israelis on October 7th".

"That context needs to be there," Rajan said, to which Lineker interrupted: "But that's not the full context, is it? The full context started way before October 7th, doesn't it?" 

Speaking about a now removed BBC documentary on children in Gaza, Lineker doubled down in his support of the work, calling it an "essential piece of journalism".

The BBC removed 'Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone' from its iPlayer streaming service amid pressure from pro-Israel groups and figures who highlighted that the 14-year-old child who narrated the documentary was the son of a former Gaza deputy agriculture minister, without differentiating between Gaza's civilian administration and Hamas' military officials.

Lineker, who was among 500 arts and media figures who called for the documentary to be reinstated, reiterated that he would "one hundred percent" support it being re-added to iPlayer.

"I think you let people make their own minds up. We’re adults," Lineker said. "We’re allowed to see things like that. It’s incredibly moving."