Bitter FA (or how Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen may have lost the BBC the right to screen England matches)

Football's leading television analysts Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen may have joked and criticised their way out of the highest profiles in sports broadcasting.

That was the astounding suggestion yesterday when the BBC was stripped of its rights to air FA Cup ties and England home games in a coup by ITV and the Irish-based satellite company Setanta. Against all expectations, the BBC and Sky were beaten by a combined £420m bid by their rivals. Three years into a four-year deal which the BBC claimed had brought stature back to the previously jaded FA Cup, the corporation now faces a ratings wilderness when ITV and Setanta take over its rights to cover the Cup and international games at the start of the 2008-09 season.

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Though the winners were claiming a straightforward bidding victory, a position supported by the FA, it emerged that Brian Barwick, the FA's chief executive, had complainted bitterly about the recent critical tone of coverage of England's recent disappointing performances when he meet BBC executives just a few days before deal was announced yesterday.

The BBC were said to be shocked by the loss of their flagship football rights, which they regarded as one of their few sure-fire rating bankers. But it later emerged that the debacle was not quite the surprise it appeared when ITV and Setanta won the bidding.

An early warning came when Barwick attacked Lineker, Hansen and their new sidekick Alan Shearer for a "locker-room mentality" which created too much freewheeling and aggressive criticism of the England coach Steve McClaren and his currently under-performing team of superstars.

The host broadcaster had, it seems, treated the product with a little too much irreverence: too many double-takes by the laconic Lineker, too many critical tablets of stone being brought down from the moutain top by Hansen. One source close to the negotiating process said: "Barwick made it clear that the FA had a problem with the tone of the BBC analysis and the inference was made that this could be a problem in the negotiations."

As the process developed, ITV and Setanta outbid the BBC by £60m, but the suspicion remained that the BBC, now left with highlights scraps, had been ambushed in their belief that they would retain some of the cream of "public service free-to-air sports broadcasting".

A senior FA source last night admitted that there had been irritation with the BBC's coverage of recent internationals and that this had been mentioned to the BBC. But it was claimed that the decisive factor was the superiority of the rival bid. In the words of an FA insider: "In the past there has been no secret that we have been upset by some of the coverage. But the fact is this was a business decision."

The Sports minister Richard Caborn will no doubt be concerned at suggestions that a "muzzling" clause is being injected into football rights negotiations. The fear must be that football, conscious that it remains the most powerful asset in any TV ratings war, is now in the business of attempting to control "opinion". The operating imperative might be translated as "pay through the nose, and then curb your tongue".

Ironically, Sky sometimes has a lone voice of critical balance in the presenter Richard Keys. This required him this week during England's performance against Andorra to remind the panellists that when Steven Gerrard scored his decisive, "world-class" goals, he was competing against a teamtied in the world rankings with the Solomon Islands.

Meanwhile, Lineker and Hansen were perhaps reflecting on the cost of free speech in the troubled world of English football.