Lukas Podolski has criticised the wives of footballers in a bit of a rant that comes with quite heavy sexist undertones.

Speaking to the publication, Gala, Luklas Podolski said, “Most of the players’ wives really get on my nerves.

“You didn’t see many of them before they met a football player and then they suddenly make a big deal out of themselves on social media.

“We Podolskis do things our way and are happy with it. My wife has no ambitions to be seen.”

In other words, ‘my wife has no desire to outshine me and I like it that way because she knows her place’.

This is, of course, an old and tired trope, that women only want to marry footballers to gain celebrity and fame for themselves. The fact is, we rarely see or hear about most player’s wives, many of whom are successful in their own right.

At best, this is lazy from Podolski but I feel I’m giving him too much of the benefit of the doubt in calling it that.

Jessica Contento, who is married to the Bayern Munich defender Diego Contento, couldn’t let the comments go unaddressed. “I really cannot understand his statement,” she told Bild. “Here the cliché, which I and many other players’ wives have fought against for years, comes back again.

“The fact is that with such a statement, you have no chance of being perceived differently as, for example, an entrepreneur, mother or a woman who is not dependent on her husband, she says.

“When such a great personality makes such a statement, the negative image of player wives that many women fight against is reinforced.”