“IT WAS SCARY SITTING IN FRONT OF 30 MPS. IT FELT LIKE A SCENE FROM TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”
The weather is grey and gloomy on this Saturday morning, though you wouldn’t know it as Eni Aluko walks through the door.
The Juventus forward has been through a lot during the last three years, yet she greets FourFourTwo with a beaming smile. Clouds may cast a shadow across the room we are in today, but Aluko isn’t about to let the turbulent events towards the end of her career cast one over a highly successful life in football.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Aluko and her family moved to Birmingham when she was only one. Soon she had a little brother, Sone, and in time both would become professional footballers –Sone with Birmingham, Aberdeen, Blackpool, Rangers, Hull, Fulham, Reading and now Beijing Renhe; Eni at Birmingham, Charlton, Chelsea, Saint Louis Athletica, Atlanta Beat, Sky Blue FC and now Juventus.
That alone has proved a major achievement for the 32-year-old – becoming a professional player in the female game seemed a distant dream when she began her career in 2001.
When she appeared for host nation England at Euro 2005, she had to take a history A-level exam on the morning of a match. Even at the first of the three World Cups she played at, in China in 2007, she was paid a paltry £40 a day.
But Aluko has always been more than just a footballer. She graduated from a law degree at Brunel University with first class honours. She cites her inspiration as Atticus Finch, the lawyer in favourite book . Finch stood up for racial equality and Aluko was forced to do the same after her 102-cap England career
