Alex Scott is returning to co-host this year's Soccer Aid alongside Dermot O'Leary, putting the former Arsenal right-back back on a stage where sport and television meet in front of a national audience. For viewers, it is a familiar face in a familiar role, but one that still carries weight because Scott has spent years moving from the pitch into the centre of British broadcasting.
The timing matters because Scott, 41, has become one of the most recognisable figures in sports media after breaking new ground in 2018 as the 's first female football pundit at a men's World Cup and the first female pundit on Sky Sports' Super Sunday. She later became the main presenter for One's Football Focus from 2021 until its final broadcast in May 2026, and has also fronted The One Show, Children in Need and Sports Personality of the Year.
Her route to that point began at Arsenal, where she joined at the age of eight and returned in three separate stints, scoring the winning goal in the 2007 UEFA Women's Cup Final along the way. Scott also played for the Boston Breakers in the United States, earned 140 caps for England, represented Great Britain at the 2012 London Olympics, and retired from football in 2018. Those years built the credibility that helped her become more than a retired player with a camera in front of her.
That public profile has always sat beside a more private life that Scott has chosen to describe on her own terms. She is in a relationship with Jess Glynne, whom she met at a London private members' club in early 2023 before they confirmed the romance later that year. But Scott has also said she does not strictly define her sexuality and has spoken about loving both men and women throughout her life, a reminder that the parts of her story that are easiest to package are not always the ones she is willing to simplify.
Scott has been more open about the relationship than she once was about her personal life, telling I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! that she was waiting for the proposal and that her forever was with Glynne. Glynne, for her part, joked on social media that she better go get a ring. The unanswered question is whether that offhand exchange turns into something more serious, but for now the clearer next step is simpler: Scott will be back alongside O'Leary when Soccer Aid returns, and she arrives there as one of the most established broadcasters the game has produced.
Her rise also carries a different kind of significance. Born in Poplar, East London, to a Jamaican father and an English mother, Scott has spoken about a difficult upbringing and has used her platform to turn that background into part of a wider public story. She received an MBE in 2017 and now has places in both the English Football and WSL Halls of Fame, a résumé that explains why her return to Soccer Aid feels less like a booking and more like the latest stop in a career that keeps expanding.
