The BBC has announced Gary Lineker's replacement for the World Cup final, with both Mark Chapman and Alex Scott passed over for the coveted role. Lineker will be absent from the BBC studio during this summer's tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico, having departed the broadcaster last summer following a controversial Instagram post, for which he subsequently apologised.
Lineker will instead provide World Cup coverage through his podcast, The Rest Is Football, after signing a lucrative deal with Netflix to stream it throughout the tournament. He will be succeeded as the BBC's lead presenter by Gabby Logan, who is set to front live coverage of the World Cup final ahead of Match of the Day regular Chapman and departing Football Focus host Scott.
That's according to the Daily Mail, who report that Logan will also host the BBC's opening match of the World Cup and England's group stage fixture against Ghana. When she takes the helm for live coverage of the final, the 53-year-old will make history as the first female BBC anchor to present the biggest match in world football.
Chapman is understood to be out of contention as he will be reporting on The Open for Sky Sports, which is scheduled to conclude on the same day as the final. The report further states that those who have missed out have been reassured they will receive equivalent opportunities in forthcoming broadcasts, with everyone understood to be comfortable with the situation.
Lineker had originally been earmarked for the lead presenting position at the World Cup, having put pen to paper on a one-year contract extension with the BBC to carry him through beyond the current football campaign. Yet the former England frontman suddenly withdrew from his duties last summer amid the emergence of an antisemitism controversy, which was triggered by content shared on social media.
He posted a video concerning Zionism which included an image of a rat, which has been historically deployed as a slur echoing language employed by Nazi Germany regarding Jewish people. In a statement, Lineker expressed regret for the post and emphasised that he would never deliberately share offensive material aimed at a specific community.
He said: "On Instagram I reposted material which I have since learned contained offensive references. I very much regret these references. I would never knowingly share anything antisemitic. It goes against everything I believe in."
Logan previously mounted a staunch defence of the BBC's decision to have a work-from-home World Cup studio, after Lineker described it as "a green box in Salford". "We did the Women’s World Cup like this," she said. "We did the Women’s Euros – last Euros – like this, where we were in the studio in Salford, and then we went out [to Switzerland] for the latter stages. That’s a very expensive cost, to take out a lot of people to major tournaments, so we have to think about that, and the belt is being tightened all the time, as you know, with the licence fee."
"So there’s lots of good reasons why we do that, and I think our coverage has been exceptional in those tournaments and award-winning in the case of last week's Baftas, so I don't think it's harmed our coverage to not be there for the whole tournament."
