Gary Lineker is a man synonymous with English football. Having played at the very highest level, he began his career before the advent of the Premier League with Leicester City in the old First Division. His footballing journey saw him rise to become a star striker and captain of the national team and even ply his talents at the dizzying heights of club football with Spanish giants Barcelona, finally retiring in 1994 after a spell in Japanese football.
Even with such a distinguished playing career, Lineker has become a household name as a sports pundit, having hosted Match of the Day for over 25 years, taking over from another iconic presenter, Des Lynam, whom older fans will recall better. It’s a testament to Lineker’s ability as a broadcaster that his punditry career has in many ways overshadowed his achievements on the pitch.
This year, Lineker had announced his intention to step away from hosting Match of the Day which he done for over 25 years, continuing in less time-consuming roles such as covering the FA Cup and international tournaments, while focusing on his popular podcast The Rest is Football. That was until he made the cardinal error in British media: openly criticising Israel for its murderous, genocidal campaign against the occupied people of Palestine.
The so-called offending post was a short video reel on Instagram titled ‘Zionism explained in 2 minutes.’ It featured a very short, simple and measured explanation from Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former PLO spokesperson Diana Buttu. In the clip, she outlines Israel’s colonial expansion. A basic and historically sound overview. There was nothing anti-Semitic or factually incorrect about the content. The apparent problem was a small rat emoji that had been placed alongside the caption by whoever created the video. Zionist organisations seized on this, comparing it to Nazi propaganda of World War 2 which dehumanised Jews by portraying them as rats.
It was an innocuous emoji, almost certainly unnoticed by Lineker himself, but the disingenuous nature of Zionism will weaponise anything to attack those who deviate from their carefully controlled narrative. It’s obvious that the emoji was not the real reason they came for Gary Lineker—it was the fact that he dared to use his considerable platform to amplify a voice that challenged the state of Israel.
The uproar was pathetic. Lineker meekly deleted the post and issued an unnecessary apology instead of standing by what he shared. This led to an acrimonious split with the BBC. He was allowed to see out the final few episodes of Match of the Day, but all future work with the corporation was cancelled, and The Rest is Football was dropped from BBC Sounds.
Lineker is not a Marxist. He is a liberal-minded man who was appalled by what Israel is clearly doing to the Palestinian people, a reality visible to anyone not wilfully blind. He posed no real threat to the occupation, but imperialism is now so unstable, and Israel such a sickly outpost of Western capital, that even the faintest whisper of dissent from those within the propaganda machine is met with fierce repression. They fear the domino effect—one crack in the wall could turn into an avalanche.
Backing down didn’t save him. He should have stuck to his guns and continued to condemn the crimes being inflicted on the Palestinian people. This is why we must never dilute our message. We must remain firm in our convictions and never bow to the bourgeoisie’s attack dogs in the media. These are the same criminals who would do to any section of the working class in the world, including their own populations in the belly of imperialism, what they are doing to the Palestinians if it suited the needs of capital.
Lineker’s treatment, as they have done to so many, is a warning, not just to celebrities, but to all workers. In the eyes of the ruling class, complicity or silence is the only acceptable response to imperial slaughter. Any deviation, no matter how minor, must be attacked, lest it ignite wider solidarity.
What happened to Lineker is not just about Palestine or a social media post; it is about the limits of acceptable speech under capitalism. When even the polite dissent of a football presenter is too much to stomach, it reveals the utter fragility of the system itself. We should not shrink from this reality. We should confront it, expose it, and organise against it.
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