Lineker Quits Column Over Triesman Sting
BBC presenter Gary Lineker has quit his column for the Mail on Sunday in protest at the newspaper’s decision to publish details of Lord Triesman’s secretly-recorded conversation that has put a dark cloud over England’s bid to host World Cup 2018.
The Mail on Sunday sting, in which Lord Triesman alleged that Spain and Russia were conspiring to bribe referees at this summer’s World Cup, led to the Triesman immediately resigning from his positions as Football Association chairman and leader of England’s 2018 World Cup bid.
Lineker is an official ambassador of the bid and fears that the report may have done permanent damage to the efforts to bring the World Cup back to England.
As a result, he said, he had decided that he could not continue working for the Mail on Sunday: ‘The story itself, the circumstances surrounding it and the actions of the Mail on Sunday in publishing it have undermined the bid to bring the World Cup to England in 2018.’
‘I wholeheartedly support the bid, because I believe that hosting the tournament would be brilliant for the country, and I am an official ambassador for it. I have therefore taken the view that I cannot continue as a columnist for the Mail on Sunday.’
Lineker, who will front BBC’s World Cup coverage, had been a columnist for the newspaper for six years.
