Many wondered which Toon Gary Lineker would strike in his last game of the day, given the circumstances of his departure. Would he be his usual witty self? Would he call it? Would he be apologetic?
Millions of eyes and ears around the United Kingdom were prepared when the clock struck 10.30 pm, and Lineker's face filled the screen on BBC One, just as it has in the last 26 years.
“It was not meant to end this way,” Lineker said. He likes an opening with connotations for other situations, and today was no different.
These were not seven words about the way his exit from the BBC, but rather about how little there was to play for the last day of the Premier League season. Although we are not stupid, that's not what he actually implied.
“With the title race about and the relegation places confirmed, the Champions League was everything we had to talk about,” he continued.
The camera then took to his co-stars Alan Shearer and Micah Richards with the first to grabble clearly in a desperate attempt to stop laughing in the studio, while the last of ear was shining.
It was the most obvious nodding to the anti -Semitism Row that the news flooded in the past week and led to an earlier than planned exit.
Lineker has never been shy to pronounce words that many would not dare, not in the least on national television. And despite cutting an apologetic figure in midweek, he did not show any signs of sorrow on the screen.
The majority of the show that followed was exactly what you would expect. Lineker led us through the story of the last day with his usual Panache, while Shearer and Richards analyzed the drama that unfolded on Sunday.
Whatever you think of him, there is a reason that Lineker is seen as the best presenter about. He makes the work look so simple that many of the audience believe that they can take his place. Everything is seamless, silky and easy to view (not like his early days at work).
His last time in the hot chair was no different. It felt like you looked at the same show that you have seen over the past two and a half decades, only the images were more modern. That is how it should be, it is a formula with the country in week after week coordinated.
Good luck to mark Chapman, Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan, try to replicate his elegance on the screen. They are all brilliant presenters and it is worth helping to help the show, but we may never see a football player reaching Lineker as a presenter again.
Well, I say this was a normal show, but it really wasn't. There were some small differences everywhere that indicate his departure of the iconic show, starting at the beginning.
Before the famous theme – melody was shot from the TV, blessed a assembly that shows Lineker's best pieces as a football player – of which many were – blessed our screens. Then a much less silver fox and a Grayer Lineker from the early 2000s say: 'The end of an era', before the real credits begin.
Small tribute is then made during the show, with the most unexpected, but friendliest, perhaps at the end of Lineker's last interview for the BBC. Arne Slot, who was draped on his Premier League medal, showed a touch of class.
“Thank you for being such a great presenter of a BBC show that I watched many times when I lived in Holland, and still,” Slot told Lineker. 'Great what you did. I like that I could give you a Liverpool shirt instead of the other club you played for. '
Despite the reputation damage that Lineker brought to the BBC with the Pro-Palestine Instagram video, with an emoji of a rat that Lineker had again placed on Instagram, they showed class by celebrating his career as the presenter of the day of the day.
With the way in which the relationship was demolished, the BBC could easily have ended Lineker's term without tribute. However, that would not have been the right thing to do, and that's why they didn't do it. Lineker has provided Top Class coverage for two decades and they had to recognize that.
They got everything out of the closet to give Lineker a good shipment; It was not half -hearted. An almost 10 -minute assembly of tribute to Shearer, Danny Murphy, Alan Hansen, the children of Lineker and even the famous opera singer Andre Bocelli adorned the screen. Overboard? Yes. Earned? Based on his presentation alone, whole.
Then, after more than a quarter of a century of the flagship of the BBC, the farewell message from Lineker had arrived and emotions were clearly high in the studio.
“Time to say goodbye.”