You don’t have to agree with Eni Aluko, but resorting to bigotry is simply pathetic

Did you know that not a single, solitary white male football pundit has ever said anything even remotely stupid? Mad, isn’t it? Also categorically untrue, of course, but then again, you look at some of the discourse that has been doing the rounds on Twitter in recent days and you can’t help wondering if people might actually believe it to be the case.

Earlier in the week, former England international Eni Aluko caused quite the hullabaloo with some comments about Declan Rice. Speaking on talkSPORT, she suggested that Manchester City’s sudden and apparent interest in the player was not necessarily based on a desire to sign him, but rather on some clandestine plot between Pep Guardiola and Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta in which the former would table an offer to encourage the latter’s employers to submit a bigger bid in kind.

The internet, it is safe to say, did not like this hypothesis very much. Soon Aluko was trending all over social media as the usual suspects - and almost without fail it really was the expected cast of detractors and doubters - piled on to mock her for her supposed idiocy. A saga hasn’t caused this much hysterical outrage since the Star Wars prequels. And Disney sequels. And subsequent spin-offs.

Now, here’s the thing; at first glance, I’m not too crazy about Aluko’s theory either. There’s just something about it that doesn’t compute, that feels... iffy. Why would City go out of their way to help a club who very nearly just pipped them to the Premier League title, and perhaps more pertinently still, why would Arsenal deliberately try to inflate the price tag of a player who they have been openly pursuing for months on end? It’s enough to leave you scratching your head.

But as nonsensical as it may seem to me, the notion of attacking Aluko herself on a personal level for the claim is doubly insane. When news broke that City had dropped out of the race for Rice, and that Arsenal were once again the overt frontrunners to sign him, the pundit came forward to, in the first instance, suggest she had been vindicated, and in the second, allege that she had been the victim of racist and misogynistic abuse.

Again, I’m not entirely sure that she has been proven right over her far-fetched assertion, but the accusations of hateful language absolutely must be taken seriously. Football is, at its heart, a diverse sport that should be accessible and welcoming to everybody, both on the pitch, and in the discussion that surrounds it.

Instead, far too often, we see it fiendishly clutched at and hoarded by dim-witted bigots who seem to think that this game that has always - historically speaking - been intended for the many is actually the preserve of people who look like them and them alone. It’s dull and infuriating, and if it weren’t so damaging, it would be downright boring too.

By all means, criticise Aluko’s argument if you like. We’re not supposed to agree on everything, and if we did, football wouldn’t be half as compelling or intriguing as it is. But as soon as you have to resort to chauvinism, or racism, or any kind of prejudice to make your point, you have automatically and immediately lost your place in the conversation. In the words of Aluko herself: ‘Women in football are not going away. Get used to it.’