Lineker has been one of Fifa’s most visceral critics and it is baffling to find him presiding over events in Moscow, even in an industry where the phrase ’complete moral volte-face’ tends to draw blank looks
As the days ticked down you kept thinking he might still have something up his sleeve. Maybe this is a brilliantly orchestrated inside job. Maybe halfway through the World Cup draw in Moscow, as the balls are divvied up and shark-like Fifa men with faces as blank as the polished granite interior of a Panamanian bank vault yawn behind their hands, Gary Lineker will wink at the camera, drop the mask of sickly corporate piety and get on with trashing the place.
This is how it might have gone down. Swiping the autocue to one side, Lineker wrenches the World Cup ball machine from its dais, whirling it above his head as the world’s elite football nations are disgorged from its plastic sphincter and sent spinning across the marbled floors. Bulky men with earpieces begin to surge through the crowds. On stage Lineker shouts “death to all dictators” and rips off his shirt to reveal the words End Slavery carved with a scalpel across his chest.
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