Ian Wright and Alan Shearer have announced that they will not be appearing on Match of the Day this weekend in solidarity with Gary Lineker, who is stepping down as a presenter amid a dispute with the BBC over impartiality regulations.
Lineker will no longer host Match of the Day, the BBC’s premier football show, until further notice, the network confirmed on Friday.
The statement said: “When it comes to leading our football and sports coverage, Gary is second to none.
“We have never said that Gary should be an opinion free zone, or that he can’t have a view on issues that matter to him, but we have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies.”
Wright soon took to Twitter, writing: “Everybody knows what Match of the Day means to me, but I’ve told the BBC I won’t be doing it tomorrow. Solidarity.”
Shearer later wrote: “I have informed the BBC that I won’t be appearing on MOTD tomorrow night.”
Lineker has been chastised for equating the rhetoric used by the government in their asylum proposals earlier this week to “Germany in the 1930s” in a tweet on Tuesday. The former England striker said the approach laid out by Home Secretary Suella Braverman was ‘beyond horrible’.
Lineker has remained by his tweet in the days since, despite appeals from government officials for the BBC to speak with him about their neutrality.
On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the broadcaster stated it is having a “honest conversation” with Lineker, and a brief statement announced he will stand down from hosting Match of the Day.