The BBC scram­bled to stem an es­ca­lat­ing cri­sis Sat­ur­day over its sus­pen­sion of for­mer foot­ball star and pro­gram host Gary Linek­er for com­ments crit­i­ciz­ing the British gov­ern­ment’s new asy­lum pol­i­cy.

As a grow­ing num­ber of Pre­mier League play­ers and pre­sen­ters ral­lied to Linek­er’s sup­port, Britain’s na­tion­al broad­cast­er was forced to rip up its ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sports sched­ule and face al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal bias and sup­press­ing free speech, as well as praise from some Con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians.

The broad­cast­er said it would air on­ly “lim­it­ed sport pro­gram­ming” over the week­end af­ter hosts of many of its pop­u­lar sports shows de­clined to ap­pear, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Linek­er. He was sus­pend­ed from “Match of the Day”, a pop­u­lar high­lights show, over a Twit­ter post that com­pared law­mak­ers’ lan­guage about mi­grants to that used in Nazi Ger­many.

In­stead of blan­ket cov­er­age on Sat­ur­day of the most pop­u­lar league in the world, the BBC had no pre­view shows on ra­dio or TV and would not be re­port­ing on the fi­nal scores of Pre­mier League games in the ear­ly evening. Lunchtime TV pro­gram “Foot­ball Fo­cus” was re­placed on Sat­ur­day with a re­run episode of an­tiques show “Bar­gain Hunt,” while ear­ly evening “Fi­nal Score” was swapped for “The Re­pair Shop.”

Foot­ball fans tun­ing for “Match of the Day” — the late-night foot­ball show that has been a British in­sti­tu­tion for 60 years — will like­ly get match cov­er­age from the same feed used by broad­cast­ers around the world in­stead of BBC’s own com­men­ta­tors and no stu­dio pun­dit­ry from some of the most high-pro­file stars in the British game.

There will not be any post-match play­er in­ter­views, ei­ther. The Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ballers’ As­so­ci­a­tion said some play­ers want­ed to boy­cott the show as a ges­ture of sup­port, and as a re­sult “play­ers in­volved in to­day’s games will not be asked to par­tic­i­pate in in­ter­views with ‘Match of The Day.’”

The union said it was a “com­mon sense so­lu­tion” to avoid play­ers fac­ing sanc­tions for breach­ing their broad­cast com­mit­ments.

The BBC said it was “sor­ry for these changes which we rec­og­nize will be dis­ap­point­ing for BBC sport fans. We are work­ing hard to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion and hope to do so soon.”

Linek­er, 62, was a house­hold name in Britain even be­fore he be­came chief “Match of the Day” pre­sen­ter in 1999.

One of Eng­lish foot­ball’s most laud­ed play­ers, he was the lead­ing scor­er at the 1986 World Cup and fin­ished his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer with 48 goals in 80 match­es for Eng­land.

Af­ter re­tir­ing from a ca­reer that in­clud­ed stints with Barcelona, Tot­ten­ham, Ever­ton and Leices­ter, Linek­er has be­come one of the U.K.’s most in­flu­en­tial me­dia fig­ures and the BBC’s best-paid star, earn­ing 1.35 mil­lion pounds ($1.6 mil­lion) last year.

An en­thu­si­as­tic so­cial me­dia user with 8.7 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers, Linek­er has long irked right-of-cen­tre politi­cians and ac­tivists with his lib­er­al views, in­clud­ing crit­i­cism of Britain’s de­ci­sion to leave the Eu­ro­pean Union.

The lat­est con­tro­ver­sy be­gan with a tweet on Tues­day from Linek­er’s ac­count de­scrib­ing the gov­ern­ment’s plan to de­tain and de­port mi­grants ar­riv­ing by boat as “an im­mea­sur­ably cru­el pol­i­cy di­rect­ed at the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in lan­guage that is not dis­sim­i­lar to that used by Ger­many in the 30s.”

The Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment called Linek­er’s Nazi com­par­i­son of­fen­sive and un­ac­cept­able, and some law­mak­ers said he should be fired.

On Fri­day, the BBC said Linek­er would “step back” from “Match of the Day” un­til “we’ve got an agreed and clear po­si­tion on his use of so­cial me­dia.” Linek­er has yet to com­ment pub­licly, and on Sat­ur­day went to his home­town of Leices­ter to watch Leices­ter City play Chelsea. He was greet­ed with cheers from by­standers as he ar­rived.

The 100-year-old BBC, which is fund­ed by a li­cense fee paid by all house­holds with a tele­vi­sion, has a du­ty to be im­par­tial in its news cov­er­age, and BBC news staff are barred from ex­press­ing po­lit­i­cal opin­ions.

Linek­er, as a free­lancer who doesn’t work in news or cur­rent af­fairs, isn’t bound by the same rules, and has some­times pushed the bound­aries of what the BBC con­sid­ers ac­cept­able. Last year, the BBC found Linek­er had breached im­par­tial­i­ty rules with a tweet about the Con­ser­v­a­tives’ al­leged Russ­ian do­na­tions.

BBC neu­tral­i­ty has come un­der re­cent scruti­ny over rev­e­la­tions that its chair­man, Richard Sharp — a Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty donor — helped arrange a loan for then Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son in 2021, weeks be­fore Sharp was ap­point­ed to the BBC post on the gov­ern­ment’s rec­om­men­da­tion.

For­mer BBC Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Greg Dyke said the net­work had “un­der­mined its own cred­i­bil­i­ty” by ap­pear­ing to bow to gov­ern­ment pres­sure.

“The per­cep­tion out there is go­ing to be that Gary Linek­er, a much-loved tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter, was tak­en off air af­ter gov­ern­ment pres­sure on a par­tic­u­lar is­sue,” Dyke told BBC ra­dio.

Keir Starmer, leader of the main op­po­si­tion Labour Par­ty, said the BBC was “cav­ing in” to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure from Con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers.

“They got this one bad­ly wrong and now they’re very, very ex­posed,” he said. —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by JILL LAW­LESS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. AP Sports Writer Steve Dou­glas con­tributed to this sto­ry