Gary Lineker row: No Leeds United players to speak to tonight's Match of the Day as result of asylum tweets controversy

The former World Cup golden boot winner was suspended as host over tweets about the Government's asylum policy.

An initial article on the BBC news website suggested it had been a mutual decision, but this quickly proved not to be the case.

Since then the pundits due to work alongside him that night, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, opted against working in solidarity. When a number of potential replacements for the trio also made it known publicly that they would do the same, the programme announced a change to it usual format, with no presenter or pundits.

Then leading commentators said that they also did not want to work in a show of support.

It broadened beyond the programme with reports that Football Focus had been cancelled as a result of a presenter backlash, and that Final Score might be too. So was Fighting Talk on Five Live and Mark Chapman was said to have pulled out of presenting the main afternoon sports programme.

And now it has emerged that players will boycott post-match interviews as a result.

A statement from their union, the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), read: "We have been involved that players involved in today's games will not be asked to participate in interviews with Match of the Day.

"The PFA have been speaking to members who wanted to take a collective position and to be able to show their support for those who have chosen not to be part of today's programme.

"During those conversation we made clear that, as their union, we would support all members who might face consequences for choosing not to complete their broadcast commitments.

"This is a common sense decision that ensures players won't now be put in that position."

Player are contractually obliged to speak to Match of the Day and other official broadcasters as part of the multi-billion-pound deals which fund the Premier League.

But the Lineker row has exploded since the former World Cup golden boot winner's tweeted "Good heavens, this is beyond awful" in response to the Home Office's initial video in which Suella Braverman outlined the policy the Government is proposing to stop immigrants illegally entering the country.

The Home Office admitted the legislation may not be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which Britain is still signed up to after Brexit.

But the row really kicked up when Lineker said the language used "is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the '30s" causing a backlash from Conservative MPs and supporters of the Bill.

BBC employees are expected to be politically impartial but there have been counter-arguments about freedom of speech, consistency, and whether a freelance sports employee like Lineker should be bound by political rules when expressing an opinion on a different platform.

Now even Leeds footballers have been pulled into the controversy.