‘Eni Aluko is incredibly divisive and alienates those she works with’: We hear what people in women’s football are REALLY saying about shunned pundit and the sadness over her not applying her true talents

When Eni Aluko appeared on an award-winning podcast, it seemed like the opportunity to build something out of the courage she had displayed in facing down Joey Barton, one of the most vicious dispensers of digital hate.

Aluko had, with the radio and TV presenter Jeremy Vine, successfully pursued Barton for libel damages over his abuse of her on X and testified in the Liverpool Crown Court criminal case which saw him convicted of hate crimes in December. ‘Eni has been incredible. She’s an immense individual,’ Vine told Daily Mail Sport earlier this year.

But what ensued on the 90s Baby Show podcast, and a subsequent talkSPORT appearance, obscured Aluko’s highly articulate defenestration of Barton. Instead she went nuclear against Ian Wright and Nedum Onuoha, claiming their appearances on women’s football broadcasts are blocking her own route to media work which has dried up.

The absence of support within the women’s game in the two weeks since suggests that those extraordinary appearances have made her isolated and virtually unemployable in football media.

Wright, a champion of women’s football, is thought to be indignant about Aluko’s renewal of claims against him, but he is understood to be taking the view that he will not dignify her comments with a response. 

Such is the minimal credit Aluko appears to have left in the game. Onuoha, the former Manchester City defender whose work for US media organisation ESPN includes women’s Champions League analysis, is taking the same approach, despite his own private indignation.

Ian Wright (left), a champion of women’s football, is thought to be indignant about Aluko’s renewal of claims against him, but he is understood to be taking the view that he will not dignify her comments with a response

The fact that Aluko mispronounced the surname of Onuoha as ‘Onoora’ when initially identifying him as a man taking women’s work on the podcast has not gone unnoticed within women’s football. 

Not even Aluko’s former England team-mate Lianne Sanderson has offered public support. It was Sanderson who described her as ‘one of my best friends,’ in a supportive message at the height of the controversy surrounding Mark Sampson, the former national team manager, who was sacked amid a controversy about comments to her which were found to be a form of racial discrimination.

The ‘rolling eyes’ emojis in some women’s football WhatsApp groups when Aluko renewed her attack on Wright reflected a familiarity, among those who have played and worked with her, with her hyper-sensitivity, grievances and lack of compunction about going on the attack. 

‘I’ve known Eni for years,’ says one woman working in football. ‘She is incredibly divisive and has alienated those she works with. No one’s saying it publicly, because why should they? But so many friends she has had have fallen out with her massively. She reads the room all wrong and will find something really divisive in nothing.’

Some recall an incident with Patrice Evra, whom Aluko was alongside in the ITV studio at the 2018 World Cup for a group stage game between Costa Rica and Serbia.

Evra clapped Aluko’s opening observations on the Costa Ricans in a way which could be deemed patronising, leading ITV Sport controller Mark Demuth to step out during an ad break to point out that this kind of gesture wasn’t necessary.

The Frenchman said he had simply praised Aluko because he was impressed, but Aluko saw it as demeaning. She opted not to agree to a photograph with him to show no harm was done, when it briefly threatened to blow up as an issue for Evra online. Aluko even deemed the episode worthy of mention in her autobiography, where she said she hadn’t wanted to ‘excuse casual sexism’. She didn’t comment because she didn’t want to ‘dial up the volume even further’.

Colleagues and former team-mates describe Aluko feeling a slight or disrespect and either changing the mood of a room by saying so or firing off messages which can change the nature of a relationship. ‘She will get something in her head, decide that something needs calling out when it doesn’t and then trample on the rockery,’ says one source. ‘There can be a real edge to that.’

When Daily Mail Sport reported Sampson’s perspective, in 2017, on Aluko’s allegations that he had racially discriminated against her, she made a direct phone call to us – attacking the piece and levelling a number of baseless accusations against Sampson.

Multiple sources suggest that a cooling in Aluko’s once warm relationship with broadcaster Laura Woods came in such circumstances. Woods’ insistence that women’s football punditry should not be ‘gate-kept’ for female pundits led Aluko to accuse her of ‘gaslighting’ when she went on talkSPORT’s Jim White and Simon Jordan show to defend herself. Their disagreement preceded this controversy.

Aluko’s latest criticism of Wright included the suggestion that he failed to help her get shifts after her ITV work started drying up. It is understood that Wright actually has been willing to discreetly help her, but ITV has the final say. Daily Mail Sport has not spoken to Wright or his representatives for this report.

Laura Woods’ insistence that women’s football punditry should not be ‘gate-kept’ for female pundits led Aluko to accuse her of ‘gaslighting’ 

Aluko showed immense courage by facing down Joey Barton after his vicious digital attack on her and her punditry skills

Wright has looked out for Aluko before, including when she was trolled for stating during an ITV broadcast at the 2022 World Cup that Richarlison’s 19 goals in 40 appearances for Brazil was ‘one goal a game.’ Wright told the haters to ‘grow up’ and said he had made ’countless errors on air’.

Aluko seems to view herself as at least as good a commentator and analyst as Emma Hayes and Karen Carney, who are far more immersed in the WSL than she is and, according to some inside women’s football, far stronger on factual detail. ‘She doesn’t do the homework that other pundits do but seems to view herself as better than them,’ says one source.

Some within the game cite the extravagant title of Aluko’s 2019 autobiography, They Don’t Teach This as evidence of an immodesty. Though she promotes herself as the first female pundit on Match of the Day, that appearance actually came on the former Women’s Super League-focused Match of the Day Extra show.

‘She needs someone to challenge her view of herself,’ says one source. The end of Aluko’s working relationship with prominent women’s football agent Jo Tongue, who was instrumental in helping Aluko get her TV breakthrough, removed a positive professional presence. We have not spoken to Tongue for this report. Aluko is currently represented by former Daily Mirror journalist Eva Simpson.

An Instagram clip from April 2023 shows Aluko with Wright before she first aired her claims that he was an impediment to her progress, on the BBC’s Women’s Hour. They samba-d together pitchside at Wembley before England played Brazil in the Women’s Finalissima. ‘She can be incredibly great company in that way and sweet,’ says a source.

Some in women’s football remember how she put her head above the parapet a decade back when England’s players were earning as little as £40 a day, using her experience as a qualified lawyer to speak out in favour of better pay.

She worked with the Professional Footballers’ Association’s vice chief executive Bobby Barnes to push for the advent of central contracts for England players. ‘Her intelligence was striking,’ says one PFA source from that time. ‘She had a command of the legalese and an ability to communicate to players. That is a rare asset.’

Aluko’s two years as a trainee with the legal firm Lee and Thompson involved work on the defamation case between comedian Frankie Boyle, the firm’s client, and the News of the World. It turned on whether Boyle’s jokes were factually racist or satirical and therefore anti-racist. Boyle won and was awarded damages. Aluko later worked as a legal aide in celebrities’ phone hacking cases against the News of the World.

Barton arriving at Liverpool Crown Court, where he would be handed down a suspended prison sentence for offensive social media posts late last year 

‘The fact that she actively wanted to defend her position on talkSPORT, and remained highly articulate and calm in the face of some very unpleasant treatment from Simon Jordan, shows the intelligence she brings,’ says one source

‘There is no doubt that she has a lot to give to the game,’ says one female former colleague. ‘The fact that she actively wanted to defend her position on talkSPORT, and remained highly articulate and calm in the face of some very unpleasant treatment from Simon Jordan, shows the intelligence she brings, even though I didn’t agree with her argument. The sadness is that she brings this belief that it’s the whole world against her. Working with her is difficult.’

Some in the women’s game are now questioning whether Aluko’s series of controversial claims about her treatment demand a revised analysis of the events which led to Sampson, a generally popular manager among his players, being sacked by the FA in 2017.

A barrister-led independent inquiry found that the evidence of his discriminatory conduct towards Aluko amounted to Sampson joking that she should make sure her Nigerian relatives did not bring the Ebola virus with them to an England friendly at Wembley in 2014 – when the African nation was fighting an outbreak of the disease. 

‘There was a context to what he said,’ says one source. Investigating barrister Katherine Newton found the joke to be racially discriminatory but she concluded Sampson was ‘not a racist’.

The striking absence of allies these past two weeks leave an uncertainty as to where Aluko goes next. Through her involvement with the Mercury13 investment group, she has a part-share in Italian club FC Como Women and Bristol City Women. She told talkSPORT that she was also an ‘ambassador’, did ‘a lot of work in Africa’, had a corporate speaking career and didn’t need her ITV work. Her comments about Wright suggest otherwise.