Show caption Eniola Aluko played for England more than 100 times. Photograph: The Guardian Women's football Eni Aluko: ‘We all have moments in life when our morals are called into question’ When the striker called out racism in football, it ended her international career. She explains why the fight was worth it Simon Hattenstone Sat 24 Aug 2019 10.00 BST Share on Facebook

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Eniola Aluko is one of only 11 female footballers to have played more than 100 times for England. She has scored some of the Lionesses’ most memorable goals, was the first female pundit on Match Of The Day, and is a qualified lawyer, having graduated from Brunel University London with a first in 2008. But it is as a whistleblower that she is destined to be best remembered. And, like many whistleblowers, she has spent the subsequent years being rubbished by those she exposed.

Now she has written a memoir. They Don’t Teach This is a fascinating examination of her multiple identities – British and Nigerian, a girl in a boy’s world, footballer and academic, a kid from an estate with upper-middle-class parents, a God-fearing rebel. But the book is at its best when she reveals exactly what happened after she accused the England management team of racism, and the Football Association of turning a blind eye to it. Aluko does not hold back – and few people from the football establishment emerge with their reputation intact.

Aluko now plays for Juventus in Italy, but we meet at her old stomping ground, Brunel. She has been delayed by traffic, which gives me time to explore the sports centre. On the wall are three huge, framed posters of Brunel alumni – sporting legends. Guess who they are, I say to Aluko when she arrives. “Mo Farah, definitely,” she says instantly. And? “Erm… oh, Usain Bolt! Obviously! He trained here.” And the third? She is stumped. Then she looks. “Oh. My. God!” It is a poster of her playing for England. “Wow! That’s amazing.” She looks genuinely thrilled.

Aluko has a small, mobile face with striking features – big, brown eyes and a huge, ear-to-ear smile. When she is unhappy, she makes no attempt to hide it; her glare is as forbidding as the smile is winning. And there haven’t been many times over the past five years that Aluko has had reason to smile.

Eniola Aluko playing for England against Germany at Wembley in November 2014. Photograph: Alamy

It all started in January 2014, barely a month after Mark Sampson took over as manager of the Lionesses. Sampson was 30 years old, an inexperienced coach who had never played professional football. At 28, Aluko was virtually an England veteran, a first-team regular and a popular member of the squad who had used her legal skills to champion teammates – notably helping to draw up a new central contract for the team. The striker was also a conscientious player, always keen to improve her game.

Her desire to better herself led to her taking advantage of a new system that enabled players to watch back games and analyse their own performance, while hearing the audio from the management team. After a match against Finland, a 3-1 win for England in which Aluko had scored a goal and made another, she reviewed the footage. Aluko had been pleased with her performance – which made it more shocking when she heard the audio. “The goalkeeping coach Lee Kendall said: ‘Eni is lazy as fuck,’ and: ‘She’s not fit enough.’ Then, when I lost the ball, he said: ‘Oh, fuck off, Eni,’” she tells me. She heard no disparaging remarks about other players, nor any positive comments when she scored and assisted a goal.

Aluko was confused. She was in the form of her life, with six goals in six games for England. And, more to the point, she says, she had never been called lazy before. “At the time, I didn’t think too deeply about what was being said. I was just like: why is this being said about me on a portal that everyone can access? Then I started thinking about where has this come from.” The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that there was a racial connotation. “Look, lazy is a generic term. Anybody can be called lazy if you’re not tracking back. But if you’re black and you’re called lazy, it’s different. Some words have real context to them, and this dates back to slavery times. In that split second, I’m sure Lee Kendall didn’t think about racial connotations, but that’s what racism can be.”

One coach spoke to her in a fake Caribbean accent. 'I was tempted to speak to him in a Scottish accent'

One coach spoke to her in a fake Caribbean accent. ‘I was tempted to speak to him in a Scottish accent, despite knowing he was Welsh.’ Aluko is fully aware, as are most football fans of a certain age, how charged the word “lazy” is in relation to black footballers. In 2004, the former Manchester United manager Ron Atkinson was sacked as a pundit on ITV (and as a Guardian columnist) after a microphone picked him up saying the French defender Marcel Desailly “is what is known in some schools as a fucking lazy thick nigger”. Aluko knew Kendall’s comment bore no comparison, but she couldn’t help thinking about it. She started to feel the management team had it in for her, but kept stumm. What Kendall had said was unpleasant, but it would be virtually impossible to prove it was anything more. If they didn’t like her, she would show her worth on the pitch. And she did, finishing joint top scorer among all nations competing for qualification for the European Championships in 2015, with 13 goals.

But the comments continued – now to her face. In November 2014, she told Sampson that her family was flying in from Nigeria for a friendly against Germany. He replied: “Well, make sure they don’t come over with Ebola.” (Sampson denied saying this for a long time after.) Aluko says she laughed nervously but was left reeling. She told her England teammate Lianne Sanderson, but said she wasn’t going to make a big deal of it. She wanted to focus on her football.

At one point, Kendall, a close friend of Sampson, started speaking to her in a fake Caribbean accent. It infuriated Aluko – not least because she isn’t from the Caribbean. “I was often tempted to speak to him in a Scottish accent, despite knowing he was Welsh, just to make the point.”

‘I’m an optimistic, positive person normally, but I was miserable during that time.’ Photograph: Perou/The Guardian

Then she started to notice other things happening to black members of the squad. In October 2015, Chelsea’s midfielder Drew Spence was called up to the England squad for the first time, for a trip to China. Spence told Aluko that, in a meeting of midfielders, Sampson turned to the newcomer and said: “Haven’t you been arrested before, then? Four times, isn’t it?” Spence was the only non-white player in the room and has never been arrested. After making these remarks, Sampson never picked her again for England; she still has only two caps.

A few days later, the midfielder Jill Scott was feted when she won her 100th cap against Australia – speeches were made, she captained the team, a video message was played from her family. In the same match, Sanderson won her 50th cap – another considerable milestone, normally celebrated with a special shirt – but this was ignored. Sanderson told Aluko she was devastated; with Aluko’s encouragement, she told Sampson how upset she was, but asked him not to make an issue of it in front of the team. The following day, he addressed the squad, said he had made a mistake in not acknowledging her 50th cap and presented her with a special shirt. Sanderson was never selected for England again.

While Sampson did not drop Aluko, he told her repeatedly that he couldn’t rely on her, that she lacked stamina and heart, that she was selfish and didn’t play for the team. After Aluko scored a hat-trick in a 10-0 thrashing of Montenegro, Sampson presented her with the ball, telling the team: “We all know Eni is a pain in the arse, but she did well to score a hat-trick after I gave her the target of scoring five goals today.”

Aluko was still reluctant to draw attention to Sampson’s behaviour. “As black players, you don’t always want to be bringing these issues up. You want to just play football. You know that the accusations of ‘playing the race card’ are going to come up. So I would bite my tongue. I’d see the level of ignorance, roll my eyes and get on with it.”

And so it continued. Aluko says the only thing that kept her going was her desperation to reach 100 caps – and become the first British-African woman to do so. When it finally happened, in February 2016, the occasion was soured by Sampson. She says he refused to give her advanced notice she would be playing, so she could invite her family. Then, on the morning of the match, Sampson told her she wasn’t in the starting 11 because he wanted to field his strongest team. In the end, he brought her on in the second half and the captain, Steph Houghton, handed her the captain’s band. But by then she was inconsolable.

Three months later, in May 2016, the FA invited Aluko to participate in a confidential “culture review” about her experiences as a black woman in the England team. She agreed to a phone interview in which she said that she felt demoralised, and that under Sampson’s management her negative experiences outweighed the positive ones.

Twelve days later, she was visited by Sampson at Chelsea’s ground and told she was being dropped from the England squad for “un-Lionness behaviour” and a bad attitude in the previous camp. A shocked Aluko asked for examples. Sampson told her she had been withdrawn and that her behaviour differed depending on whether or not she was in the starting lineup. Aluko hasn’t played for England since.

Aluko gives evidence to the digital, culture, media and sport committee in October 2017. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

She was convinced she had been dropped because Sampson had found out about the supposedly confidential culture review. In June, she wrote to the FA with a grievance report. In August 2016, the head of elite development finally replied, insisting the two were unrelated. The FA told her it would investigate her allegations, but at the same time announced that its Integrity Unit was investigating a consultancy role Aluko had with a football agency. The FA concluded that she would have to stop working for the agency or quit football, because she was in breach of “FA intermediary roles”. Aluko argued there was no conflict of interest, but surrendered her paid role.

She began to think she wasn’t simply involved in a spat with the England management, but that she was at war with the FA. And, as far as Aluko was concerned, the FA was playing dirty.

***

Aluko calls herself an accidental whistleblower. She never planned to sacrifice her career on the altar of justice; she just planned to alert the confidential review to inappropriate behaviour. In a way, she says, all she has ever wanted to do is quietly conform and get on with playing football. But Aluko has always stood out.

Her parents, Sileola and Daniel, moved the family from Lagos to Birmingham when Aluko was six months old. Daniel returned to Nigeria to pursue a career in politics, while Sileola worked first as a nurse and then for a pharmaceutical company, bringing up her children in England. From the age of five, Aluko was the only girl on her estate who played football. She and her younger brother, Sone, also a professional footballer, spent their free time honing their skills. Until she went to secondary school, she says, she never had a female friend. Her football-playing male friends called her Eddie, because it was a bit easier than Eni and a lot easier than Eniola.

Some parents were hostile to Aluko playing football – particularly as she was better than their sons. The young Eni was told she was different from all the other girls. She knows she should have been proud, but she felt crushed. “If I was talking to my young self, I’d say: don’t be afraid to be individual. Because I was afraid to be different. When the parents at school said: ‘Why’s a girl playing football?’ it made me feel alien.”

It wasn’t only football ability that differentiated the Alukos. While the other children on the estate spoke with a broad Brummy accent, Sileola insisted Eni and Sone spoke the Queen’s English. They might have been living a working-class life, but they did not have working-class roots. In Nigeria, their father had become a prominent politician. Meanwhile, at school, she began to learn how complex prejudice can be. “I didn’t get racism from the white girls, but I got really bad bullying from the black Caribbean girls who saw something in me that they didn’t understand. They used to call me ‘African bhuttu’, which was patois for unsophisticated. And they called me ‘Coconut’ because I spoke well and hung around with white people.”

At the age of 15, she joined Birmingham City Ladies, where her coach Marcus Bignot labelled her the “Wayne Rooney of women’s football”; like Rooney, she was short and muscular with an explosive burst of pace. That year, she was called up to the England youth squad. At her first camp, her skills made her stand out. “I flicked the ball over somebody’s head, brought it down and did a Cruyff turn and Hope Powell [Sampson’s predecessor at England] stopped the session and said: ‘It’s not the Eni show.’ I remember thinking: well, I’m not going to do that again. I’ll just get it and pass it.” Now she says she wishes she had followed her instincts – it would have made her a better player. For her, that was a big difference between the boys’ and girls’ games – while boys were encouraged to nurture their individuality, girls were scolded for it.

Aluko was once labelled the ‘Wayne Rooney of women’s football’. Photograph: Perou/The Guardian

Despite that desire to conform, there was already something unusually forthright about her. After discovering her cousin Fola had become a high-flying lawyer in New York, and reading To Kill A Mockingbird, she decided she wanted to become Atticus Finch and save lives. By then, Aluko says, she saw an injustice lurking on every corner. A boy in her class was bullied for his afro. Rather than defending him, the school banned afros. Aluko was outraged – not least because one boy had long, dyed-green hair and nothing was said about it. She went to see the headteacher, who heard her out and told her she was changing the rules – enforcing short hair for all the boys. It taught her that justice doesn’t always look the way you want it to. That Christmas, the school awarded her a special prize for speaking up for others.

***

After Aluko put her grievance into writing in 2016, an internal investigation cleared Sampson and the management team of any wrongdoing. Aluko threatened to take the FA to court. The FA held a second investigation, this time hiring the barrister Katharine Newton to examine the evidence. In March 2017, it again cleared Sampson and his staff of wrongdoing, but Aluko was paid £80,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

In August that year, the findings were leaked to the Daily Mail, along with information about the settlement. Aluko was horrified by the way she was portrayed. The Mail did not mention the racism, only that Aluko had made allegations of bullying and harassment against Sampson and his staff. It suggested that the FA paid her the money only because it wanted to avoid disruption in the buildup to Euro 2017, that she was making problems because she had lost her place in the squad, and that her teammates didn’t like her. In fact, the payout was for loss of earnings.

As for the report itself, Aluko calls it a shambles. “It basically said: ‘Eni lied about racism. Mark Sampson never said anything racist. The team is very happy. We’ve interviewed a lot of players, and they say it’s a great culture.’” How did she feel when she saw it? “I was gutted. Gutted. I was publicly being called a liar.”

Does she think the FA set out to destroy her? She nods. “It wasn’t about Mark Sampson any more. It was about Eni Aluko versus the FA – David versus Goliath. The PR machine of the FA was ‘Make Eni look as bad as possible’. It was a smear campaign.”

Did anything ring true? Well, she says, the report was accurate that she had become withdrawn. “I’m an optimistic, positive person normally, but I was miserable during that time. You have a lot of downtime on England camps, so I was in my room on my own trying to get through it. I didn’t really socialise with anybody.” How did she cope? “I have a strong faith in God. I’d watch stuff from my favourite preachers about opposition and how to face adversity.” Did she lose faith at any point? “No, I think my faith got stronger, because in that period that’s all I had.”

***

In August 2017, Aluko told her side of the story to Daniel Taylor of the Guardian (she is now a columnist for the sports pages of this paper). She revealed that Sampson had made the Ebola comment and asked an unnamed mixed-race England player how many times she had been arrested. A month later, Spence told the FA that she was the player in question and that everything Aluko had said was true. The Professional Footballers’ Association called for a new investigation, accusing the FA of holding a “sham” review that was “not designed to establish the truth, but intended to protect Mark Sampson”.

Five days after Spence came forward, England played Russia. Every member of the team raced to the bench to celebrate with Sampson after Nikita Parris scored the opener for England in a 6-0 win. Aluko says that was when she finally cracked. “I cried my eyes out when I saw that. Players can celebrate how they want, but in the midst of the case I just thought it was too much. I felt really, really low at that point.”

A day later, the FA sacked Sampson out of the blue, stressing that it was nothing to do with the racism allegations. It emerged that he was forced out because of a relationship he had had with a player three years earlier when he was managing Bristol Academy. In January 2019, Sampson received a payout from the FA for unfair dismissal.

Aluko says she is comforted by the number of female footballers who have spoken out in the past couple of years. Since her case, the American women’s team have pursued an equal pay dispute. And Ada Hegerberg, Norway’s top player has said: ‘I don’t like the way things are happening [regarding unequal pay]. Photograph: Perou/The Guardian. Adidas Originals track top £74.95, Adidas Originals, adidas.co.uk.

A third investigation was ordered into Aluko’s allegations and, in October 2017, Newton concluded that Sampson had racially abused Aluko and Spence. While stressing that she did not regard Sampson as a racist, Newton said: “I have concluded that, on two separate occasions, Sampson has made ill-judged attempts at humour, which, as a matter of law, were discriminatory on the grounds of race within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010.” The FA apologised to Aluko and Spence.

A month later, the FA was accused of a cover-up after saying that Kendall would not face action, while concealing the fact that he had admitted putting on a mock Caribbean accent to Aluko. Kendall resigned as goalkeeping coach and apologised to her.

This January, 16 months after losing his job, Sampson also apologised to Aluko and Spence, saying: “As a white male, I needed to do more and I’ve worked hard to educate myself. I spent six weeks with Kick It Out on their educational course for equality and diversity. I need to play a more active role in making a difference. It’s something I will do for the rest of my life.”

***

How did Aluko feel when she read the final report? “Elated. Vindicated.” Since the FA’s apology, she says, they have been building bridges. “After the case, they asked me to be part of the recommendations with UK Sport to build whistleblowing procedures.” Where possible, she says, she wants to forgive. “Forgiveness is an action, a decision. I had a decision to make. Am I going to hold on to a lot of this pain and frustration with how they treated me, or am I going to try to build a lasting relationship that will impact change moving forward? I had the opportunity to try to do something that was positive with the FA and I did that.”

Have fellow players apologised to her? Silence. “Erm… a few of the Chelsea girls have, yeah.” She mentions her former Chelsea teammates Fran Kirby and Karen Carney – close friends and women she hugely respects. As for Spence, Aluko says their relationship is stronger than ever. “Drew is somebody I probably speak to every other day – more than anyone else in football.” But Aluko is less forgiving towards members of the squad for not supporting her. “To this day, Steph Houghton and a lot of leaders in that team have not come out and apologised to me for what I went through. People say: ‘D’you want them to sacrifice their careers for you?’ No, I don’t. But I do expect a team of people to say: we do not share these values, we do not accept that what the manager said was correct.” She bangs the table as she talks.

This summer I was doing media at the World Cup. But I’m only 32 and I could have played

Would she go for a drink with them now? “No. With quite a few of them, categorically no. Because what they represent is fundamentally the opposite to me.” In what way? “Just not being able to come out and say: for my teammate to go through this, for racism to be even talked about in this team, is unacceptable.”

In June 2018, Aluko left England to play for Juventus. She has enjoyed a hugely successful year there – winning the league and cup double, finishing the season as the club’s top scorer. But, despite her impressive form, Aluko did not make the England squad for this year’s World Cup.

Does she ever think how differently life might have turned out if she had kept her mouth shut? “Yes. This summer I was doing media at the World Cup. But I’m only 32 and I could have played. I think my England career would have lasted longer than it did. At the point I decided to tell the story, I knew it was going to cost me my England career.”

She pauses, then says something surprising. “And that’s a very powerful position to be in.” Why? “Because a lot of players, all they can think about is their pay cheque and the fact that they want to play football, so they don’t say anything. So they don’t end up leaving any legacy for the next person who comes along, and it’s going to happen to them, too. I would like to think that, next time a player complains about something going on, and not just a black player, it won’t be accepted.”

One thing that has comforted her is the number of female footballers who have spoken out in the past couple of years. “I’m not going to take credit for this, but, since my case, both the Australia and New Zealand women’s teams have publicly complained about the culture of fear; the American women’s team are in an equal pay dispute and probably going to win. Ada Hegerberg, Norway’s top player and the best player in the world, said: ‘I don’t like the way things are happening [regarding unequal pay]. I’m not playing in the World Cup.’ There are many examples of women standing up and saying: we’re not having this any more.”

Unfortunately, this list includes few of her former teammates. Not surprisingly, she says, they now seem uncomfortable when they see her.

Will she ever make up with them? Aluko shakes her head. “I don’t need to. My life has moved on. Everybody knows what I stand for. That is far more powerful than being an England player who puts on an England shirt and plays well.” As much as the England management and the FA, Aluko feels bitterly betrayed by her own colleagues. “I would much rather be where I’m sat than where they’re sat, because people question them to this day. People say it to me all the time: ‘I find it difficult to support the women’s team because of how they behaved.’ We all have moments in life when our fundamental morals are called into question. In the face of what happened to me, they did nothing. People remember that.”

An exclusive extract from Aluko’s memoir: ‘No one could teach me how to navigate this hyphenated identity’

It was being called up to play for England that made me understand I wasn’t officially British. Not yet, at least. Not on paper.

A few months after I joined the youth team of Birmingham City Ladies, in 2001, we were scheduled to play a tournament in Warwick, and our coach Marcus Bignot told us England scouts would be there. The final whistle blew on the tournament and I jogged over to my dad, who was visiting from Nigeria. One of the scouts approached, told me I’d played well, took my details and said he’d be in touch. That was it.

It wasn’t long before the first letter from England landed on our doorstep. “Mum!” I called out. “England want me to go to an under-15s trial!” Later, she got the letter framed and hung it in the hallway. I think she saw it as something that anchored us even deeper in the UK; one of us could be representing the country.

The trial was at Loughborough University. As the date approached, Mum started to worry about what I was going to wear. Appearances have always been important to her. I told her I’d just wear my training stuff, but she wouldn’t hear of it. The week before the trial, we went shopping and bought a pencil skirt, a collared shirt, a suit jacket and high heels to match.

The day came and Mum drove me up to Loughborough. Parents were invited to stay for a short introductory briefing with the manager, Hope Powell. We pulled into the car park and I spotted a couple of other girls walking into the building.

“Oh, God,” I said, horrified. “They’re all wearing tracksuits.”

We stepped inside the building, my stomach doing backflips. Thirty or 40 girls sat with their parents, every one of them in a tracksuit and trainers. I swear I heard a murmur ripple around the room, as the girls looked round and nudged each other. I lowered my head and clip-clopped over to a seat in the far back corner. A few minutes later, Powell walked into the room and launched into a business-like introduction. I didn’t hear a word she said. The second the talk was over, I jumped up and ran off to change into my training gear. I’ve never lived it down.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived saying I’d been picked for a week-long camp. I scanned the letter and took it into the kitchen to show to Mum. I began reading it out loud, then I stopped. “Oh no,” I said. “Mum, they want me to bring my passport. What are we going to do?” Mum frowned. She had applied to make us all British citizens, but the paperwork, the checks, the tests – it all took a long time. It had never crossed my mind I would need to be naturalised as British to play for England. We had “leave to remain”, which meant we could stay in the country as long as we wanted.

I felt entirely British. I’d lived in England my whole life; it was the only home I knew. I was so tired of being the odd one out. I felt a familiar despair rising, one I was coming to associate with my British-Nigerian identity.

Passports were a big deal for the Nigerian community in the UK. A red British passport was a prized possession for those who had been in the UK long enough to own one alongside the Nigerian document, known as a green pali. To hold a British passport was a gateway to the world. Mum mentioned our problem to Dad, to her Nigerian friends and family. “Listen,” said one uncle, who liked to flaunt that he was a British citizen by birth. “If she dares show up with green pali, they’ll send that child straight back. She has to be Britico now, don’t you know that?”

I felt like an alien in my own country. If I wasn’t British, then what was I? I thought back to my last visit to Nigeria. I felt like a foreigner there, too.

Every day I’d wake up and hope the document would drop on to the doormat. Every day it wasn’t there and the camp was another day nearer.

In the end, I took an acknowledgement from the Home Office proving Mum had applied for naturalisation, together with a note she wrote. It was all we had. Thankfully, the coaches were more relaxed than expected.

A few months later, my passport finally arrived. Mum emptied the burgundy books out on to the table, alongside our Nigerian documents. “Now you can travel wherever you want,” she said.

I saw for the first time what this process meant. Getting a red passport was more than a formality. It was about status. She had been an adult when she first came to the UK, and all this time she had been a foreigner. She had worked hard to forge new paths for herself and her children. I turned over the little red book in my hand and stroked the gold coat of arms on the front. I picked out my old Nigerian passport and held it in my other hand. Two passports, two identities.

No one could teach me how to navigate this hyphenated identity. For me, being British-Nigerian is a tightrope I’ll be on for the rest of my life. And whenever I wobble, or feel others are trying to pull me in one direction or the other, I grab on to my hyphen and remember I’ll always be both.

• They Don’t Teach This by Eniola Aluko is published by Yellow Jersey Press (£14.99). To order a copy for £10.99, go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK P&P on online orders over £15. Phone orders minimum P&P of £1.99.