Eni Aluko and Simon Jordan caught in heated row during talkSPORT ad break | Football

Eni Aluko and Simon Jordan were caught in a heated row during talkSPORT’s advert break after he told her on air that her ‘entitlement would re-sink the Titanic’.

Aluko was a guest on the ‘White & Jordan’ show on Tuesday morning to talk about her recent criticism of Ian Wright’s prominent role in women’s football and her unhappiness with ITV’s decision to not select her as a pundit for the Euro 2025 final last summer.

During the interview, Jordan took exception to Aluko’s view on why she was overlooked by ITV with a scathing attack on her personality.

‘As far as expertise are concerned, when I listen to her as a pundit, the times I’ve listened to her, I don’t think that she is particularly enlightening, or illuminating, or engaging or charismatic, or sometimes comes across particularly likeable, but that’s my view and some people have the same view about me,’ Jordan told Aluko.

‘And my view of punditry is, when I listen to a pundit, whoever that pundit might be, whether it’s male, female, black, white, yellow, green, it’s, ‘do I learn something, do they engage me, and do they merit my attention?’.’

Aluko replied: ‘It’s an opinion which we are all entitled to. Everybody has them, I’m not going to listen to a mob on X who have never, ever put themselves in any situation to do anything close to what I’ve done in my career. I listen to the professionals, I listen to the people who have hired me for the last 11 years around the world, the biggest broadcasters in the world, by default if I’m working with the people who are considered the brilliant broadcasters, then if I’m in the same team as them, next to them, then by default I’m also considered a brilliant broadcaster.

‘So I take everything you’re saying, but the reality is I’ve been good enough for 11 years. As I said, I’m the person who would go and seek out feedback for someone to go, ‘I think you’re struggling’, it’s never happened.’

Jordan then said: ‘See, the language that you use, Eni, is steeped in a sense of entitlement. I mean, the sheer weight of the entitlement that you seem to believe you have would re-sink the Titanic.

‘I think you’ve been quite fortuitous. I think because of initiatives like DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion], they’ve allowed people to be put into positions in the men’s game that I don’t think they’ve merited, and they now seeds an attitude that you become a stalwart in the women’s game.

‘I listened to your observations about Ian, and Ian Wright is in the Ian Wright business, always has been, I’ve known Ian for 25 years and I have my own views on him, Ian is not in any shape or form obligated to provide any support structure for you or to give you a sense of entitlement.

‘Your position now as a broadcaster will be determined by the value of you. And he fact people aren’t potentially booking you now should give you pause for thought about why they might not be.’

Aluko replied: ‘Hold on, the reason people aren’t booking me is because I’ve taken myself out of the firing line. My last conversation with ITV was I’m taking a break from broadcasting.’

After talkSPORT cut from the first advert break back to the studio, the pair could be seen having an argument with Jordan forcefully gesticulating towards Aluko.

Jordan then stayed silent for the next eight-minute segment of the interview and was not asked any questions by the show’s host Jim White.

Aluko was later asked by White about people accusing her of being a ‘DEI hire’.

She replied: ‘I think it’s racist. I think it’s extremely racist to reduce someone to the colour of their skin without an assessment of all of the qualifications that get them the job.

‘It’s been considered racist by a criminal court to say that, by the way. You’ve got to be very careful to say that to a black person who can reel off a bunch of qualifications to do any job.

‘Listen, I’ve not done any job on the basis of my identity, I’ve always been the person who can back it up.’

Aluko also accused Laura Woods of ‘gaslighting’ her after the ITV host described Aluko’s suggestion that women’s football should only hire female broadcasters as ‘one of the most damaging phrases I’ve heard’.

When asked about Woods’ comments, Aluko replied: ‘I respect Laura’s opinion and always have done. I think it’s helpful for her to outline a lot of the attributes that go into a brilliant pundit.

‘Caps is part of that, as I explained, it’s not the decider, but it’s an objective way to say this person has enough experience to talk about this specific game.

‘Now, it’s interesting because Laura is one of the people I would consistently go to, we got on like a house on fire, I’d got to her and say: ‘How do you think it went? What do you think?’.

‘Laura consistently – and I had to look at the messages again and go hold on, I feel a bit gaslit here, said to me, ‘I think you’re a brilliant broadcaster, I think you’re a brilliant pundit’.

‘So, I think there’s a little bit of serving an argument at this point, which I respect, she doesn’t agree and that’s fine, but I think there’s an insinuation in there, that you don’t meet the standard.

‘Again, I’ve worked too hard for people to conclude that because you’re not seeing me on screen, I’m not good enough, that’s not true.’

When asked by White about her use of the phrase ‘gaslit’, Aluko replied: ‘Well, not gaslit, I don’t want to say that because she has a view and I appreciate her view.

‘She mentioned about little boys being important as well, I agree, but when I see little boys coming to the games now, they’ve got women on their shirts, they don’t have men pundit names on their shirts.’

When asked again about her feeling of being gaslit, Aluko added: ‘Well to the extent that I feel there’s an potential insinuation there, that if you’re sitting in the stands and not on screen then you don’t meet all of these things that make a brilliant broadcaster.

‘But as I said privately, she’s told me many times, and reassured me many times, that she thinks I’m a brilliant broadcaster, which I will forever appreciate from Laura.’

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