Former English striker Eni Aluko has accused the current England Women's football manager Mark Sampson of making a racist remark about her and her family.
The Chelsea player has also accused the Football Association of trying to brush the accusation against Sampson under the carpet or not taking her complaint seriously.
The incident is believed to have occurred in 2014 before England were due to play Germany and Aluko spoke with the Guardian today to allege what Sampson said to her:
We were in the hotel. Everybody was excited. It was a big game. On the wall, there was a list of the family and friends who were coming to watch us and I just happened to be next to Mark. He asked me if I had anyone who would be there and I said I had family coming over from Nigeria. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Nigeria? Make sure they don’t bring Ebola with them.
I remember laughing but in a very nervous way. I went back to my room and I was really upset. It might have been easier to take if it was about me alone. Lots of things had been said about me over those two years but this was about my family. I called my mum and she was absolutely disgusted.
The FA paid her £80,000 in 2016 on the basis of a confidentiality agreement but it appears that the FA have given her the consent to tell her side of the story after her interview appeared today.
Aluko has alleged that a week after she filed the complaint against her former manager, Sampson arrived to the Chelsea training ground to tell her that she was being dropped from the latest English squad for 'unlioness behaviour'.
Sampson is alleged to have made another racial 'joke' against another English player, but an internal investigation revealed that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing. Aluko has claimed that since that investigation, the player in question has not been selected for the English since.
The FA will now come under intense pressure to answer questions relating to the manager, and why they paid Aluko £80,000 in 2016.
Aluko was a member of the English ladies squad that finished third in the 2014 Women's World Cup, she has represented England on 102 occasions, scoring 33 goals in the process, a tremendous record but a sad ending for a player who has given everything to her country.
Read Eni Aluko's full interview with the Guardian here.
