BBC abandoned by viewers and performers, be it an award that prioritizes “obedience to the government”
Former England international Gary Lineker (Photo: Team photo / Reuters / Aflo)
(international journalist Masato Kimura)
Unprecedented, signboard football program shortened to 1/4
[Llundain]British weekends start and end with football.
Watch the English Premier League match on pay TV and watch the BBC football program “Match of the Day (MOTD)” in the evening. The next morning, while eating an English breakfast, I check the results in the tabloids.
However, on March 11, that all changed.
Gary, the former England captain and top scorer at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, took to Twitter to compare the government’s bill to stop small boats of illegal immigrants from being smuggled across the English Channel to “(Nazi) Germany in the 1930s.” After Lineker was forced out of hosting MOTD, former England representative Alan Shearer and Ian Wright refused to appear, and the BBC fell into chaos.
The 80-minute MOTD, which featured Lineker, Shearer, and Wright, was shortened to 20 minutes, with only a summary of the match. Football programs such as “Football Focus” and “Final Score” were also transferred to rebroadcasts of other programs due to the boycott of former England representative Alex Scott (women) and the host. The BBC was on the verge of collapse.
Lineker, who also played in the J-League Nagoya Grampus, has never received a red or yellow card in his 16 years of playing. In 1990, he received the Fair Play Award from FIFA. Lineker’s tweet, which the fair sells, literally threatens to be “the last straw in the camel’s (BBC)’s straw”.
