The Sensationalized Story of Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamraoui: What Really Happened?
The Sensationalized Story of Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamraoui
Paris Saint-Germain is a powerhouse for women’s soccer. Defensive midfielders Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamraoui are both key elements to the club’s success. Additionally, they’ve both played for the French national team. Hamraoui had recently been signed to PSG, and Diallo had just returned after being on loan. The players were teammates and friends.
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The two PSG players carpooled home from a team celebration for their long-time success as a club in early November. However, as the carpool reached Hamraoui’s house, their good spirits took a quick turn.
Two men in masks came out of the dark and dragged Hamraoui out of the car. They proceeded to attack her and beat her legs with metal pipes. Then, they were gone. Diallo was left physically unharmed after being restrained and verbally attacked by the men.
Police quickly took Aminata Diallo into custody. In a shocking twist, police said that Diallo’s detention was related to the attack of Hamraoui, even though they couldn’t link her explicitly to the attackers. This left many to speculate about the motive behind the attack.
News outlets and social media platforms surged with theories about Diallo’s involvement–that Diallo, who played the same position as Hamraoui, felt threatened by the newly-signed player and decided to hire these men to attack Hamraoui’s legs so she wouldn’t be able to play.
Why was Diallo the initial person of interest when no concrete signs pointed to her? Because people love this story–the story of a jealous teammate overtaken by a desire to succeed who takes out the competition–and it has happened before.
In 1994 U.S. figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by a man who beat her leg with a metal baton. Later her rival Tonya Harding was linked to the assaulters. It was a huge story, getting so much attention that eventually, a movie based on the events came out in 2017, I, Tonya.
As much as people eat up this kind of story, people in the soccer world just didn’t buy it. Yes, the attack appears to be purely to injure Hamraoui since nothing was stolen from the car and Diallo left was untouched; it points to this having malicious intent.
However, these women are teammates! So the fact that assumptions jumped to a jealousy-fueled attack was quite shocking. Indeed, Diallo was released from custody, and the investigators turned to other suspects, including an ex-partner and his wife.
Yet, this story is still unsettling. This story blew up overnight due to the construction of a story about Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamroaui’s rivalry. In fact, Diallo released a statement with her lawyers about the “perfectly artificial dramatization” of the reported events. We need to be thinking about why it was so easy for people to accept Diallo had a role in the attack.
Thankfully, Kheira Hamraoui is out of recovery, and Diallo has been cleared from suspicion. But, reporting on the events severely focused on her and dug into her past to construct this jealous motive. When in reality, these women were friends, they were teammates.
Not only does Diallo have to work through the trauma of being a victim in this attack, she now has to work through the trauma of being vilified and painted as a vicious teammate throughout the news.
This narrative of jealousy and anger does not and should not fit so easily in women’s soccer. It shows how sensational the reporting was and how quickly this story fell out of the news once Aminata Diallo was cleared.
Featured image via @psg_feminines on Instagram
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