Eniola Aluko: who is the female footballer with a law degree at the centre of the FA racism scandal?

How many professional footballers would cite the fictional lawyer Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird as an object of obsession during their youth? Presumably relatively few. But Eniola Aluko is not like most footballers.

The Chelsea Ladies player at the centre of the race row currently engulfing the Football Association is not just a striker, a pundit and an eloquent speaker, she is also a qualified sports and entertainment lawyer.

This week she received an apology from the FA for racially discriminatory remarks made to her by sacked England women’s boss Mark Sampson. This came after a reopened independent investigation decided Sampson had told Aluko to ensure her Nigerian relatives did not bring Ebola to a match at Wembley. The ensuing row, which reached a furious crescendo this week,  has sparked one of the biggest crises in the FA’s 154-year history.

So who is the dignified and determined woman at the centre of it? What is the backstory of this brave 30-year-old who has called out racism in her sport, and also accused FA chief Martin Glenn of conduct bordering on blackmail over the withholding of part of her payoff from the governing body until she publicly declared it was not institutionally racist (a claim Glenn has denied)?

Aluko has previously been described as “the Wayne Rooney of women’s football”, but while the comparison may be fair on the sporting front, it is some way off the mark in other respects.

Born in the Nigerian city of Lagos in 1987, she moved to Britain in her infancy and grew up in Birmingham, where she started playing football in local parks during childhood so she could continue hanging out with the boys she was friendly with.

“It was an easy way to be accepted in the group,” she has said. They called her “Eddie” rather than “Eni”, so she could fit in. Her Nigerian relatives may have frowned on it, encouraging her to play tennis instead because football was not ladylike, but her mother’s good sense prevailed and she paid them no heed.

“I just wanted to be one of the boys,” her daughter once said. “And then I realised I was better than most of them.”

Aged 11, she was approached to play for Leafield Athletic Ladies, a local side that offered her the ability to hone her skills, but not a career. For that, she turned to law. Having always had a strong sense of justice and a love of politics, law films - and the Harper Lee novel that gave her her hero - it seemed like a natural choice. And so it was that in 2008 she graduated from Brunel University London with a first class honours degree in the subject.

But she had not abandoned the beautiful game, choosing instead to juggle her twin passions, just as her sporting hero Eric Cantona - the thinking man’s footballer - remained a poet as he played.

Having played for England in her teens, she made her senior England debut aged only 17 and found herself competing at Euro 2005 while taking her A-levels. By 2007, she was signed to Chelsea, following stints at Birmingham City and Charlton Athletic. She subsequently left the west London club to play in the United States, but returned to it in 2012.

Meanwhile, during her time with “two very understanding law firms”, she worked on commercial deals for David Beckham and divorce cases. She’s helped recording artists such as One Direction and others from The X Factor negotiate with their record labels, and worked with Olympic athletes like Victoria Pendleton.

Having qualified as a sports and entertainment lawyer in 2014, her plan is to work in sports law when her career on the pitch comes to an end.

With such a variety of strings to her bow, it’s only fitting she should also have become the first female pundit in men’s football. In 2014 she made history by becoming the first female pundit to feature on Match of the Day, continuing her sideline in punditry during the television coverage of Euro 2016.

“Sport,” she once said, “gives you... real-life lessons that make you bulletproof.” As the FA grapples with the fall-out of her accusations, Aluko will be well-placed to ride out the storm.