Frontman Gary Lineker hits the post one too many times for the BBC

This is not the first time Gary Lineker has been subbed off before he could complete a body of work. In the Sweden-England game at Euro 92, Lineker was hooked by manager Graham Taylor with half an hour to go and left stranded one goal short of Bobby Charlton’s then England record of 49.

Now Lineker has been withdrawn by the BBC not only from Match of the Day but all presenting duties. At 31, he never played for England again and his BBC career is over after 26 years as the frontman.

“He probably did me a favour by making me a martyr,” said Lineker of Taylor’s decision back in 1992. The jury is out on whether martyrdom will be his epitaph after his final Match of the Day today. It will, to those who accept his retraction and apology for the lamentable “rat repost” and think the BBC has discarded its lodestar. No, say people who feel he broke BBC social media constraints once too often.

Either way, there’s no mistaking the magnitude of him disappearing from BBC output and curtailing Match of the Day’s lone-presenter lineage, which ran from Kenneth Wolstenholme, David Coleman, Jimmy Hill and Des Lynam through to Lineker, the corporation’s top earner on £1.35 million.

What BBC Sport’s flagship programme still tries to sell is family viewing, a national ritual – a safe place for televised football, with 3.5 million weekly watchers. For the price of a licence fee it continues to be a refuge from Sky’s Super Sunday bombast, TNT’s rights grab and Amazon’s limitless ambitions. Each subscription channel is a separate (or bundled) cost to fans.

With its rumpty-tumpty soundtrack and democracy of highlights, Match of the Day just about still speaks of a cosy world that will never let you down.

Like the cult of the England captain, the fetishisation of sports presenters is a British habit. Paradoxically, the big-earning compère makes the briefest contributions – setting up the show with a gag, then handing over to the pundits (in Lineker's case, Alan Shearer and Co) to explain what happened. There has been a shift in recent years from a light entertainment tone towards tactical analysis to compete with Sky. Lineker navigated the trap of not being the star analyst on an analysis show by chipping in with his own short opinions before cueing up Goal of the Month or plugging Match of the Day 2.

Sometimes it seemed a poor use of his restless intelligence and knowledge of pre-Premier League football. But that was not his role. His job was to be the face of BBC football, an updated Lynam, a reassuring presence, an anchor in an atomised TV culture. How freakish it is that his removal was ultimately connected to bloodshed and calamity.

The model of the single omnipotent ex-player presenter gives way now to a cabinet of talents, all honed by TV and radio experience to seek the balance between information and entertainment: Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan. They will fill the Lineker-shaped hole without trying to be him. Cates, Logan and Chapman are already so familiar to TV and radio audiences that there will be no jarring when next season starts.