Joey Barton calls Sarina Wiegman ‘Sandra’ in car crash Piers Morgan interview

Joey Barton appeared to call England women’s manager Sarina Wiegman ‘Sandra’ in a car-crash interview with Piers Morgan. Having caused an online furore with controversial tweets about women football pundits, Barton was offered the opportunity to elaborate on Talk TV in an interview that descended into a farce.

Earlier on Thursday, Barton split opinion with a series of social media posts about women football pundits over a 12-hour period. His initial post on X read: “Women shouldn’t be talking with any kind of authority in the men’s game. Come on. Let’s be serious.

“It’s a completely different game. If you don’t accept that. We will always see things differently. The women’s game is thriving. Fantastic to see. I cannot take a thing they say serious in the men’s arena.”

Barton was encouraged to elaborate on his views on journalist Morgan’s chat show. The 41-year-old began: “When you say what you are thinking it can lead to a reaction. I’ve seen in my game where – I do feel I have enough credibility to say I’m a bonafide expert – I’ve seen tokenism creeping in, and it’s ruining my experience and the journalistic standards. It’s nothing to do with sexism at all.”

In a lengthy interview in which Barton’s argument became increasingly unclear, he called England women’s head coach Wiegman ‘Sandra’ and said women’s pundits offer “factually incorrect information”. On one occasion, the former Manchester City and Newcastle midfielder was reminded to answer the question being asked by Morgan.

He added: “I’m against tokenism and poor journalistic standards, especially when it comes to football. I know it’s everyone’s game but there’s different variants with the men’s and women’s game. And all of a sudden if you speak out in favour of saying a ‘men’s game’…I’ve been accused of being right-wing just for saying what a lot are thinking about journalistic standards.”

“You have to be there on merit, not to fit this woke agenda that is going on in society. You don’t have to have played the game, a lot of managers haven’t, a lot of commentators haven’t. But they’ve earned the right with hard work over a prolonged period of time to get into that space,” Barton continued.

“Obviously it helps if you’ve played at a high level because it gives you a unique perspective. There are similarities between both sports but the men’s game is played at a completely different speed and completely different skill set.

“So for someone to stand there and say ‘I would have done that’ or ‘he’s made a mistake there’ who have no experience of that – and it’s not just one or two, it’s being taken over and ruining the experience.

“And this is the men’s game. I don’t want to come across as sexist, I want women in the men’s game. At Bristol Rovers we had #HerGameToo which was a great initiative to get women in stadiums, but if we’re going to talk technical nuances and to educate the audience, then we must do that with the most credible people. Not people who tick boxes or fill quotas.”

In the second half of the interview, Barton engaged in a row with former Sky Sports reporter Bianca Westwood, who worked for the station for 22 years. Morgan and Westwood both invited an increasingly irritated Barton to name a woman pundit with whom he takes exception. However, Barton insisted that he would not do so.