Aston Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz has criticised a Brazilian television host for commenting on fellow Villa star Alisha Lehmann's bum.
Milton Neves, a 71-year-old presenter, tweeted a video clip of Lehmann, 23, celebrating her goal in Villa's 4-3 Women's Super League win against Manchester City earlier this month - in which she jumped in the air, turned her back and pointed at her name.
The video clip ends by a man asking: "Without rewinding the video, what number was on her shirt?" - objectifying Lehmann. Neves shared the video on Twitter and wrote: "Watch and comment". The presenter has since deleted the tweet.
Neves has more than 2.2million followers on Twitter and has previously made controversial remarks. Luiz, 24, is in a relationship with Lehmann and was understandably furious with the tweet. The Brazil international accused the presenter of being "disrespectful".
Luiz added: "You’re old, years in soccer and you post a video that does not respect women's soccer or the player herself, who is also my girlfriend. You have not learned what respect is, that's bull****."
Lehmann has not responded to Neves, but she did retweet Luiz's reply.
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Luiz joined Villa from Manchester City in the summer of 2019 after failing to make an appearance for the Premier League champions. He has nine senior caps for Brazil and was the subject of a deadline day transfer bid by Arsenal, which was rejected.
Lehmann is a 34-cap Switzerland international and joined Villa in the summer of 2021. The forward has previously played for West Ham and Everton in the WSL after starting her career at BSC YB Frauen - the sister club of Swiss giants Young Boys.
Villa have made a tricky start to their Premier League campaign, picking up just seven points. They defeated Southampton 1-0 in their most recent game to earn just their second win of the term and relieve some of the pressure on manager Steven Gerrard.
“It feels nice. You can win football matches in different ways," said Gerrard. "We’ve lost football matches since I’ve been here by playing well and that feels really terrible, so to win today in the way we did wasn’t stylish or pretty but it was full of guts, full of fight and full of togetherness. It was a really strong performance out of possession and the boys deserve credit for that."
Although the men's side are struggling, the women's side have made a great start to their WSL campaign. They followed up their victory against City by beating Leicester 2-0 at the King Power Stadium last Sunday, maintaining their 100 per cent start.
Villa star Rachel Daly has urged the women's team not to get ahead of themselves. "We can’t get carried away," said Daly after the City win. "We didn’t have the strongest pre-season, we knew there was a lot of work that needed to be done, but what you saw was a team with resilience."
