The Lineker saga has been a huge own goal for the BBC

When it was announced that the presenter was not going to re-sign his contract we were told it was mutual. Now he says there were figures who wanted him out, writes Jim White

- Jim White

When Gary Lineker suggested to Amol Rajan in their interview this week that the BBC didn't want him to carry on in his role as the presenter of Match of the Day, he wasn't being paranoid.

They really were out to get him. Late last year, when it was announced that at the end of the football season in May, Lineker would be leaving the presentational chair he has occupied for more than a quarter of a century, public statements insisted that both parties had agreed not to re-sign a contract to continue. In football vernacular, it was a mutual decision.

This, allegedly, was not the case. Lineker claims that he had become aware that senior figures at the corporation, including the freshly recruited head of sport Alex Kay-Jelski, would not be entirely unhappy to see him go.

When they were negotiating over what happened next when his contract came to an end, he got the feeling they wanted to see the back of him. It seems, as decisions go, this was about as mutual as Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on some rocky outcrop in the South Atlantic occupied only by penguins.

Because the fact is, from what I’ve seen, I’d imagine that Lineker was more than keen to stay. He appeared to love presenting the weekly football highlights show. His jovial presenting style suggests that he takes great pleasure in travelling to Salford every Saturday to preside over the preparation and broadcast of the show, ensuring it – and he – is at the centre of the sporting conversation. He may be in his sixties, yet Lineker shows no sign that he wants to slow down, or that his ambition is in any way sated.