Gary Lineker has slammed the angry response his now deleted Lionesses tweet garnered - labelling the backlash "ludicrous".
Lineker took to Twitter in the wake of Chloe Kelly scoring England Women's winner in the Euro 2022 final against Germany and removing her shirt in celebration.
Responding to the celebration, Lineker posted on Twitter: "The @Lionesses have only gone and done it, and Kelly is England's heroine, bra none." The tweet received an immediate backlash with the Match of the Day presenter being accused of "casual sexism". Lineker promptly deleted the post but has since spoken out to slam the entire episode.
"It was ludicrous," Lineker told The Telegraph. "But it was just a few people who, I think, weren't watching the football match. So they've automatically thought I was making a sexist comment because women wear bras."
Lineker explained that he only deleted the tweet because he feared it was being taken out of context by those who hadn't even watched the game.
He added: "I'm not easily bullied. I think about my tweets all the time. That's why I thought about that one. Because I thought it was quite funny. It was just a play on words, like I do all the time, in most of my tweets when I'm watching football matches.
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"I just try to be different, which is what I do on TV. I try to do similar kinds of things and I've always done it. And I just think a few people just took it the wrong way. And I understand that.
"If I've got 8.5 million followers, every tweet I do, someone will have a pop."
Lineker spoke to the paper at the launch of a report commissioned by Ofcom into Twitter abuse suffered by Premier League footballers.
The report found that Harry Maguire and Cristiano Ronaldo received more abuse than any other players during the first half of last season.
More than 87,000 people watched the Lionesses win Euro 2022 on Sunday, setting a new record for spectators at a game at Wembley.
Ella Toone opened the scoring for England with half an hour of the game to play before Lina Magull equalised two minutes later. The final then went to extra time, where Kelly bundled home the Lionesses' winner and secured the trophy.
