Ian Wright tells trolls criticising Eni Aluko's World Cup punditry to 'grow up'

Ian Wright has hit out at the negative comments received by Eni Aluko during ITV’s World Cup coverage.

Aluko made a minor slip up while commenting on Brazil’s win over South Korea, and Wright told the people complaining about it to “grow up”.

Aluko, who played more than 100 times for the Lionesses, spoke about Richarlison during the live coverage and said: “He’s the top scorer for Brazil over the last two years and has a great record, 19 in 40 appearances. Do the math on that, it’s one goal a game pretty much.”

The 35-year-old obviously intended to say he scored a goal every other game.

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The small error caused an influx of negativity online, Wright took to Twitter to defend Aluko and criticise people’s attitudes towards female football pundits.

He wrote: “I've made countless mistakes live on air. The replies to this are horrible. You man are so pressed by women in football that you take pure pleasure in this. Grow up.”

Aluko has also responded to the negativity on Twitter, writing: “Got myself a First class law degree, 102 caps & a Doctorate but Maths wasn’t always my forte.”

She added: “Nearly 1 in 2 games is the math on Richarlison. But some of you weirdo twitterati knew that already.
“Might also learn from the rest of the analysis conveniently ignored.”

It’s far from the worst mistake made by pundits at the World Cup so far.

Jermaine Jenas mistakenly noted that the Japan and former Liverpool forward Takumi Minamino played in Germany earlier in his career, when he had never played in Germany. It was actually Austria with RB Salzburg rather than the German Bundesliga’s RB Leipzig.

Wright hit out at the "horrible" commentsGetty/ITV

Aluko is a regular part of the ITV punditry team out in Qatar and often appears alongside the likes of Wright, Roy Keane and Gary Neville.

Aluko played for the likes of Birmingham, Chelsea and Juventus over the course of her career. She was also the first female pundit to appear on BBC Match of the Day back in 2014.

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