Gabby Logan has vowed that Match of the Day will be “all about the football” when she replaces Gary Lineker as part of a three-strong presenting team.
The BBC’s flagship football programme will see Logan share hosting duties with Mark Chapman and Kelly Cates from the start of next season, with Lineker quitting after 26 years.
Lineker said upon announcing he was stepping down that the corporation planned to make changes to the show when its new contract for the rights to Premier League football began in August.
But Logan told the ainslie + ainslie Performance People podcast: “Nobody wants to throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s a football highlights show, we’ve got the same kind of pundits… and it’s all about the football.”
She also revealed the lengths to which she and her co-hosts went to keep news of their appointment secret ahead of January’s official announcement, including forming a WhatsApp group in which they altered the settings to delete messages between them automatically.
“I didn’t even tell my mum,” Logan said, revealing the only other person she confided in was her husband.
“I set up a group chat and called it, ‘The Match of the Day three’, and there were disappearing messages as Chappers was really paranoid about this. The only person I told was Kenny!”
Logan and Cates will become the show’s first permanent female presenters and the 51-year-old also said broadcasting was a “completely different landscape” for women working in sport, both in front of and behind the camera.
“There are now so many great male and female broadcasters,” she added. “But also, so many more females working in sports, not just in front of the camera or the microphone, but also behind the scenes.
“It’s like any business. If you say we have a 50-50 male and female split but all the women are doing the low-paid jobs, that’s not 50-50; that’s a hierarchy that’s male-dominated.
“It’s been really good development to hear women’s voices in your ears and hearing them say they’re the director which is great.
“Hopefully, it’s a better environment than when we were starting out. It’s definitely a much more positive place generally.”
