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Jenas had previously made no secret of the fact that he coveted Gary Lineker’s job
Not long after the BBC took Gary Lineker off air for comparing government rhetoric on migrants to that of Nazi Germany, footage emerged of him appearing to anoint Jermaine Jenas as his successor on Match of the Day.
“I think Jermaine is doing it really well,” he enthused about the presenting skills of Jenas, who he said was “drifting more towards my role”.
Now, any plan there might have been for Jenas to succeed Lineker lies in tatters after the former England midfielder was sacked by the BBC following complaints about his workplace conduct.
It also may have just gifted the corporation’s highest-paid star a winning hand in negotiations over his own future.
Despite the BBC being forced into a humiliating U-turn in reinstating Lineker within days of silencing him in March last year, doubts over the outspoken 63-year-old’s career have continued to mount in the year and a half since, with his £1.3 million-a-year deal expiring this summer.
Jenas, who was on £190,000 for presenting and punditry stints on Match of the Day and other football programmes, made no secret of the fact that he coveted Lineker’s job even as the dust settled on one of the BBC’s biggest crises.
He told the Daily Mail in April: “I would obviously be up for it… it’s Match of the Day and it would be a great opportunity.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead but I hosted Match of the Day 2 on Sunday night, which was the first one I’ve ever done. I loved it, it felt comfortable to me, it felt normal, and I love doing The One Show as well.
“I feel quite blessed that I’m even in people’s minds that it’s something I could take on given how big the show actually is.
“Gary has got plenty of legs in him and I don’t see him going anywhere soon. But when that day comes, which it will do, I would like to think that I am at least thought about to fill the position. If that is the case then I would obviously jump at it.”
He went further earlier this year on the That Peter Crouch Podcast, saying: “When I do Match of the Day, there used to be a woman called Michelle who used to do Gary’s autocue.
“So when Gary was in make-up, I used to go run and jump in the seat and be like, ‘Look, Michelle, let’s do the autocue’. She was like, ‘Go on quick, do it’, and we’d just run through the whole show.
“I was just practising and that wasn’t me going, ‘Oh, I want to do Gary’s job’. It was me just thinking, ‘Right, what’s it like in this seat, for him, to present?’, because I wanted to know what it felt like.
“She’d kind of go, ‘Ah, yeah, you’ve messed up there’ – we’d have a laugh with it. Then he’d come and go, ‘Get out the seat’. I think it was more, I knew I didn’t just want to be a pundit my whole life, as much as I love it.”
That was after Jenas’s succession plan had suffered a double blow, firstly when he was forced to apologise for calling a referee a “complete s—house” on X following a Premier League draw between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, his former club.
Jenas had previously fronted a campaign to protect football match officials.
Then, Telegraph Sport revealed how MOTDx, the Jenas-fronted Match of the Day spin-off, had been quietly axed amid a purge of the BBC’s “lurch to youth”.
But his place in the pecking order nevertheless appeared to be bolstered by the fact that Football Focus had haemorrhaged viewers since one of his main rivals for Lineker’s job, Alex Scott, had replaced Dan Walker as host.
Around the same time, Lineker launched his own ‘The Rest is Football’ podcast, the latest addition to a lucrative Goalhanger empire certain to be netting him more than his BBC salary and that has finally given him a platform to say what he really thinks with little consequence.
Using it to brand the England team “s—” during this summer’s European Championship proved to be good business for Lineker and Goalhanger and, according to his son, Harry, did him no harm with his Match of the Day bosses either.
And even if new director of sport Alex Kay-Jelksi, said to be instrumental in the removal of Jenas, did want to move on, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan are now the only realistic internal candidates remaining – assuming either wants the job.
It was on an episode of the Match of the Day Top 10 podcast that Lineker had tipped Jenas as his successor, prompting co-host Micah Richards to ask if he was nervous.
“Nervous? I’m ancient,” he joked in response. “My time is nearly up.”
After Thursday’s shock news, do not bet on it.