Soccer Football - FA Cup Quarter Final - Leicester City v Manchester United - King Power Stadium, Leicester, Britain - March 21, 2021 Gary Lineker performing media duties next to the FA Cup trophy before the match REUTERS/Oli Scarff/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) -Gary Lineker, a former England soccer captain, will step down from the BBC's Match of the Day highlights show at the end of the current season after 25 years of presenting the programme, the broadcaster said on Tuesday.
Lineker, 63, will continue working at the BBC until 2026 to cover the World Cup, extending his run as the BBC's face of football for two more years. He is the public broadcaster's highest paid star.
"After 25 seasons Gary is stepping down from MOTD. We want to thank him for everything he has done for the show, which continues to attract millions of viewers each week," the BBC's director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski said in a statement.
"He'll be hugely missed."
A top scorer for Leicester City, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur in the 1980s and early 1990s, Lineker went on to master the art of presenting in his second career. He is also the co-founder of a podcasting production business, Goalhanger.
The BBC said he would continue to work on the MOTD podcast as well as hosting its FA Cup coverage in the 2025-26 season.
Lineker's 1.35 million pound ($1.73 million) salary paid by the publicly funded broadcaster has attracted flak from some viewers and British newspapers.
Making his political views public on social media has also caused headaches for the BBC, which has strict rules on impartiality.
In 2023, Lineker was temporarily taken off air after he criticised the previous government's immigration policy on social media. He opposed Brexit and in 2018 called for a second referendum.
The BBC said it would announce future plans for Match of the Day in due course.
($1 = 0.7803 pounds)
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar; Writing by Sarah Young, Editing by Paul Sandle and Alison Williams)
