The big boys at ITV Sport must have felt so proud of themselves when they secured Emma Hayes for their World Cup coverage.

Here is a talented and brilliant pundit with both expertise and experience of the beautiful game, someone who would allow the channel to deflect accusations of sexism with all the defensive verve of Bobby Moore.

Hayes not only knows football – she knows one of the host countries, having led the US women’s team to a gold medal at the Paris Olympics in 2024 with only two months preparation. (She is still their manager and two years ago was awarded the inaugural Women’s Johan Cruyff Trophy for best coach.)

As a London girl she played for Arsenal and secured seven Women’s Super League titles as manager of Chelsea. So ITV must have thought she would be the perfect addition to the channel’s World Cup line-up, especially after all that embarrassment a few months ago when Eni Aluko, the pundit and former England player, announced she was quitting ‘toxic’ British TV after criticising ITV for prioritising men such as Ian Wright when it came to coverage of the Women’s Euros last year.

The 2026 World Cup would provide a clean slate for the channel – or a freshly wiped blackboard, perhaps. Hayes would be the perfect ingredient during those pesky hydration breaks that are driving so many football fans to drink. Her astute commentary and genius tactical analysis would keep viewers gripped while the players chugged their Lucozade.

Bonuses all round to the brainboxes who signed up Emma!

Then, in an own goal far more embarrassing than any scored at the tournament so far, the channel decided to put her on a set that they seemed to have borrowed from an Ainsley Harriott cookery show. And instead of providing her with a state-of-the-art digital touch screen, they handed her the kind of chalkboard you might reasonably expect to find in a Dorset tea room selling scones.

Yes, while the likes of Wright, Gary Neville and Roy Keane relaxed in the magnificent ITV studio-cum-New-York-loft apartment overlooking the lower Manhattan skyline, Emma had been plonked in a kitchen down the hall. It is a nice kitchen, the type many of us would pay good money for, all walnut cabinets, sleek granite worktops and achingly hip industrial handles.

But it is still a kitchen and someone at the channel, perhaps many, okayed the decision to put the world’s most successful female football manager in it.

Forget hydration breaks – I need an irritation break, so I can throw my remote at the wall.

Despite Emma providing far better punditry than Gary Lineker and his gang of blokes over on Netflix, her appearance was reduced to the kitchen showroom she was made to stand in. While some rightly praised Emma’s excellent skills – ‘I thought she analysed this game and the tactics superbly well. You can tell why she coaches at national level. Brilliant’ – the unfortunate setting quickly distracted from her searing analysis.

‘Can you imagine ITV putting Gary Neville on a set like that?’ one TV insider told the Daily Mail. ‘No chance that would happen. It’s hugely embarrassing.’

Presenter Cristo Foufas wrote: ‘I’m not sure ITV are massively advancing the idea of women’s equality in football by having Emma Hayes give her analysis from a set which looks like she’s stuck in a kitchen?’

Dan Walker also noticed the baffling decision. ‘I really like Emma Hayes and I think she’s an insightful pundit,’ he wrote on X. ‘I’m not sure why they have decided to make it look like she’s writing the specials on a bistro chalkboard! I really want to know what’s in those cupboards.’

The good chauvinists of the internet, never backwards in coming forwards when it comes to misogynistic trolling, swiftly went to work. Within moments, social media had been flooded with memes created by the latest AI.

Suddenly, Hayes appeared in a floral apron, surrounded by kitchen utensils, cookbooks and a bowl of fruit. Instead of chalking team tactics onto the blackboard, she was writing a shopping list featuring milk, eggs, bread and cheese. Another had her in a pair of Marigolds doing the washing up, surrounded by pots and pans, while someone else had her drawing an ironing board and laundry instead of the expert analysis about England’s counter-attacking she had actually provided.

I felt as depressed as Luka Modric must have been watching Harry Kane slot in that penalty he’d just given away.

Yet are any of us surprised? This moment speaks to a wider culture of sexism in football, one so deeply ingrained that television producers can’t even see it when it’s staring them in the face.

Though much has been done to improve the lot of women in football – on the pitch, in the stands and the commentary box – we all know there’s still a long way to go. A 2024 report by the anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out revealed more than half of female football fans had experienced sexist behaviour or language at matches, with one in four women saying they felt unsafe at games.

Data released by the same charity halfway through the most recent football season showed it had received more than double the number of reports of sexist incidents than it had for the same period the year before.

Last year, former Manchester City player Joey Barton received a suspended prison sentence for sending grossly offensive messages to Aluko and her fellow football pundit Lucy Ward. You can argue that he’s an extreme example but he is a mere figurehead for the misogynists who thrive on social media. ‘Women are taking over every sports channel,’ moaned one troll. ‘They are presenting every sport there is, now we have to listen to the uninformed screeching in our sport.’

Not all men hold such regressive views – in fact, most think the opposite. The reaction to Kitchengate shows there is hope when it comes to brilliant female pundits at future tournaments. The sports journalist Michael Hincks wrote that the move ‘felt naive from ITV, hung Hayes out to dry and surely must be changed going forward at this World Cup.’

May I suggest they put her where she belongs – not just in the main loft apartment but on a throne, where the likes of Keane, Wright and Neville can pay her the respect she so richly deserves?