Gary Lineker Reveals the Colleague He’ll Miss Most on Match of the Day
As Gary Lineker prepares to leave his role as host of BBC’s flagship football show, Match of the Day, at the end of the season, he has revealed the colleague he will miss working with the most. In an interview with FourFourTwo, Lineker stated that he will miss working with talkSPORT’s Danny Murphy, hailing the former Liverpool midfielder as an "underrated pundit".
According to reports from talksport.com, Lineker has been hosting Match of the Day for nearly 26 years and has announced that he will be leaving the show at the end of the current season. His replacements have already been confirmed, with Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman, and Gabby Logan set to split presenting duties between them every Saturday and Sunday.
Lineker will still be hosting his popular podcast, The Rest is Football, alongside Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, but when asked which colleague he would miss working with the most, he cited Murphy as his top choice. "There’s no point saying Alan or Micah, as I’ll still be working with them. I don’t like any of the others! That’s a joke… I’ll miss Danny Murphy, a really underrated pundit, analytically good, and always fun to be around," Lineker told FourFourTwo.
Murphy has been a regular pundit on Match of the Day since 2013 and has also become a much-loved member of the talkSPORT family. He has previously spoken about the impact Lineker had on him at the start of his punditry career, revealing that Lineker was always great with him and made him feel welcome on the show.
In an interview with talkSPORT, Murphy stated, "Gary’s a friend of mine and he’s been phenomenal to me since the day I walked in the building. A warm, charismatic, intelligent man who knows his football and has become part of everybody’s furniture, if you like, on a Saturday evening." Murphy also revealed that Lineker was always leaving him messages and making an effort to include him in social events, saying, "He’d say, ‘We’re going to be eating here, we’re going to be in this bar, we’re going to be in this hotel. Come and meet us, get a cab to there, we’ll be there’".
Lineker will still be hosting some major football events for the BBC, including next season’s FA Cup coverage and the 2026 World Cup, before leaving the national broadcaster for good. Murphy has since made over 170 appearances on Match of the Day and can be heard every Wednesday on talkSPORT with Jim White and Simon Jordan, as well as on co-commentary duty for live football coverage.
As the news of Lineker’s departure from Match of the Day was announced, Murphy expressed his surprise but also backed the idea of three hosts for the show. "I didn’t know [he was leaving], I was a little bit surprised, but Kelly Cates sharing it with Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman? That sounds like a plan. They’re all very good," he said.
The article was originally published on talksport.com and has been reproduced with permission.
