The Gary Lineker tweet

 The Gary Lineker tweet

You may well have been wondering what all the fuss was about. Besides, the joys of freedom of speech have always been celebrated at every level of society. Those dark days of censorship, prohibition, and subjects that were fiercely taboo, have well and truly disappeared like a powder puff of smoke. In Putin's Russia anything that contravened the party line was suitably punished by the KGB with a lengthy spell of solitary confinement in a dark room and possibly a bullet in the back of the head.

And this is where Lineker gate, as it should be so coined, becomes the major if only topic of discussion this morning. When Gary Lineker levelled West Germany's deflected free- kick that looped over Peter Shilton in the 1990 World Cup in Italy, most of us thought the angelic one whose family used to run a market stall in Leicester would never do anything even remotely wrong. His behaviour was impeccable and a squeaky- clean career with both club and country led us to believe that one day he would be sainted, knighted and elevated to the peerage.

How appearances could be so deceptive? After a series of minor skirmishes with social media and a couple of grumbles, Lineker is back in the spotlight and under the scrutiny of all and sundry. Not for the first time the former Leicester City, Spurs, Everton and Barcelona striker has put his size 10s in it. It was not so much a grievance or just a dissenting voice but the innermost thoughts of a passionate and forthright social commentator. But sadly it was the kind of comment that he may come to regret permanently in the immediate future if the BBC decide to take a very dim view of his heartfelt beliefs.

Yesterday Lineker took full advantage of his position as a famous public figure and a football individual who rightly felt he could pontificate on any given subject provided it wasn't too controversial. But then everything came unstuck and unravelled almost alarmingly for the blue- eyed boy from Leicester who once played for his country. He jumped onto his soap box, exercised his keyboard fingers and found Twitter to be the most convenient platform for his highly explosive and incendiary comments.

In normal circumstances Linker's take on the topical migrants story may have been quickly dismissed as the rantings of a former footballer with designs on becoming, dare we say it, a full - time politician. And yet it was the nature and context of his comments that were almost immediately attacked and criticised. It was almost as if Lineker had committed the ultimate sin, reacting perhaps too sharply to a news story he had no right to be as judgmental on since apologies would be demanded and besides Lineker was just endorsing the sentiments of the whole of the British population.

But the man who once scored an overabundance of goals for fun at Spurs, wasn't about to go away quietly. Yesterday Lineker sheepishly emerged from his home, smiled obligingly for the cameras and was convinced he was the innocent party. He ducked into the back of a car, coat draped casually over his arms and, for all the world, totally unaffected by all the commotion. He reminded you of a man who had just been accused of stealing a dinner jacket from a reputable menswear shop. It was an absurd allegation and one he would fight all the way to the highest court in the land.

The truth is of course that a nation of football lovers will be denied its weekly fix of highlights- driven football on a Saturday night. Match of the Day is not only the most familiar theme but also one of its leading voices of authority of BBC football. Both Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, Micah Richards and Danny Murphy and made all of their objections heard in the public domain. The pundits have had their say and it is to say nothing while the commentators have also downed tools. In fact the Salford studios from where Match of the Day delivers its weekly broadcast will begin to resemble a municipal library this evening.

So where does that leave Match of the Day? You suspect it'll be left in an awkward state of limbo and dumbstruck, contemplating its navel and examining its Reithian code of morality. Lineker went on record as saying that the migrants escaping from persecution in troubled, war-torn countries reminded him of the language and rhetoric emanating from the 1930s. Now the implication might have been that foreign migrants looking for safe sanctuary could be directly compared to all the pre -Second World War propaganda.

Now depending on your point of view this is no more than a statement from the heart of one of football's most jovial jokers, a man who rigidly sticks to his guns on any topic and will never be reluctant to say it straight from the hip. Lineker was also outspoken on the recent World Cup in Qatar and there are seemingly no boundaries in his world.

Match of the Day, which next year will mark its 60th anniversary, stands by its principles and will not tolerate the nonconformists, the rebels and renegades, the militant tendency, the trade unionists with their banners, their shop stewards and those well lit braziers with smoke pouring from every angle. It is hard to know where or how far Lineker and company will take this now very political hot potato. At the moment football is not so much in revolt but simply disillusioned with its paymasters at the BBC. You suspect that peace will be restored and mutual agreement between all parties will be found eventually. But for tonight at least Match of the Day will be turning the off switch and hoping that a temporary crisis doesn't degenerate into all out warfare.