Laura Woods hits back at Eni Aluko over women’s football punditry row | Football | Sport

Laura Woods appears to have responded to Eni Aluko’s remarks regarding her limited opportunities as a pundit. This comes after the presenter reacted to Aluko’s recent outburst about the media landscape in the women’s game.

“Men should be part of that. I’m not saying anybody should be excluded, I believe in diversity wholeheartedly, but the same way we’ve played a role in the men’s game that’s a supporting role, you’re part of the ensemble, you’re never going to get the premium final games, it should be the same way for women’s football.

“I think we need to protect the women’s game in the same way the men’s game is protected. What I mean by that is, and you’ve heard me discuss the journey of women’s football, it’s taken a while, it’s taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get the women’s game to where it is now.”

Aluko continued: “There’s a lot of people, including me, who have sown many seeds to be reaping what we’re reaping now… TV, money coming into the game, investment, and it’s still growing. From my perspective, we didn’t go through all of that – blood, sweat and tears – for women to be second place in our own sport. What are we doing? That’s my point, the women’s game should be by women for women.

“Male allies should absolutely support that but when it gets to the point where you’re the main character of the show, we’re just repeating the patriarchal stuff that we’ve been fighting against.”

However, ITV and TNT Sports presenter Woods took issue with Aluko’s stance. On Monday, the TV host voiced her opinion across several social media posts.

Writing on X, Woods stated: “Caps don’t win automatic work and they don’t make a brilliant pundit either. The way you communicate, articulate yourself, do your research, inform your audience, how likeable you are and the chemistry you have with your panel are what makes a brilliant pundit.

“‘The women’s game should be by women for women,’ is one of the most damaging phrases I’ve heard. It will not only drag women’s sport backwards, it will drag women’s punditry in all forms of the game backwards.

“If you want to grow something, you don’t gate keep it. We want to encourage little boys and men to watch women’s football too, not just little girls and women. And when they see someone like Ian Wright taking it as seriously as he does – they follow suit. That’s how you grow a sport.”

Concluding her thread, Woods stated: “Here’s a picture of our team at ITV. We won best production at the Broadcast Sport Awards 2025 for our coverage of the women’s euros. Seb Hutchinson won best commentator too. So I think ITV got it just right.”