Female journalist gives her opinion on Lukaku and Morata and faces horrible sexist abuse

Out of order.

This is Mina Rzouki. She is a football journalist with a special focus on European leagues, particularly Serie A. She has been invited onto various worldwide media outlets including the BBC, CNN, ESPN, TRT World and BT Sport to provide her expert opinion. As with most football pundits, her views are forthright, opinionated, and of course, up for debate. Rzouki appeared on BBC 5 Live on Tuesday evening, and was asked about her opinion on the respective merits of Romelu Lukaku and Alvaro Morata. Her response was emphatic and perhaps somewhat surprising:

"Any day of the week if you offered me the choice between Morata and Lukaku, I wouldn't even think about it. I would pay £20m/£30m more if I had to, and I would bring in Morata..."

https://twitter.com/5liveSport/status/884851276525182976 She went on to explain her statement, espousing the merits of Morata's game, talking up the Madrid player's experience and intelligence, and conversely questioning Lukaku's own intelligence and making the point that the Belgian may end up physically burned out by the sheer amount of football he has already played. Now, you may agree with her comments and believe her to be spot on. On the other hand, you may think she's spouting utter shite and being disrespectful of Lukaku, who seems to come across as an intelligent individual with excellent footballing nous. Fair enough, either way. As you'd imagine, many fundamentally disagreed with her view point and showed their chagrin in no uncertain terms: https://twitter.com/United2706/status/884864158516293632 https://twitter.com/IconicUnited/status/884914499836358656 https://twitter.com/mike7dunn/status/884858901606408192 https://twitter.com/StraightGenes/status/885031516077797377 All of these reactions are passionately opposed to Rzouki's take, and that's cool. They're essentially treating her in the same way that they'd treat any other pundit they'd disagreed with, i.e. arguing that they feel she's talking rubbish. Someone like Robbie Savage or Neil Custis or Owen Hargreaves would get the same response. However, there were a depressing number of replies that treated her very differently to any of her male counterparts. They decided to react is a disgustingly sexist way with a barrage of vile comments that had less to do with her opinions and more to do with her gender and their neanderthal prejudices. This is not okay. Female pundits are exactly the same as male pundits - sometimes right, sometimes wrong, sometimes shite, sometimes spot on. They deserve to be credited and discredited for being good or bad, not for being men or women. Apologies for the following bile, but it gives you just a taste of what women in football have to contend with: https://twitter.com/Darmian_esque/status/884915308879851520 https://twitter.com/Namesio18/status/884862089227112448 https://twitter.com/StelGreco/status/884853387841425408 https://twitter.com/MistaRobz/status/884917833699921920 https://twitter.com/Winnalldinho/status/884941303875850240 https://twitter.com/Sir3_/status/884858809868402688 https://twitter.com/PrimeUtd/status/884910213136084993 https://twitter.com/GoldieNathan/status/884853886019829761 https://twitter.com/AndyPandy1995/status/884862597778067456 https://twitter.com/TarrafAbed/status/884927014184136704