Last Saturday I wrote – in disparaging terms – about Lauryn Goodman, the ex-lover of footballer Kyle Walker, who had taken her four-year-old son Kairo to England’s game against Denmark on Thursday night.
He had dressed him in an England shirt emblazoned with his father’s number 2 and the words “Dad.”
Knowing that Walker’s wife, Annie, would be there with three of her four children with Kyle (Roman, 11, Rian, seven, and Reign, five) wearing nearly identical T-shirts, I wrote: “What takes an ex lover to humiliate the wife of a soccer star?” ? How can she be so cruel?
And then I read Lauryn’s account, told to my colleague Katie Hind, about why she took Kairo to Frankfurt to watch her father play that night. I felt…well…embarrassed and began to question my views on this vulgar saga.
Lauryn Goodman with her son Kairo before watching her father Kyle Walker play against Denmark
It is said that his father promised Kairo that he could be in the stands the next time he played a major tournament.
According to Lauryn, when Kyle was playing for England at the Qatar World Cup in 2022, and when she was secretly pregnant with her second child, she promised Kairo, over a FaceTime call, that she would make sure their son was in the stands below. time she played in a major tournament.
Needless to say, Kyle, who earns around £9million a year playing for Manchester City, never kept that promise. Little Kairo resigned himself to the fact that his best hope of seeing his father during the tournament lay in a package of soccer cards for his Euro Cup card book.
But Lauryn was determined to keep Kyle’s promise to her ex-lover, so she took Kairo there herself, along with her grandfather, without any help from Dad.
She insists that the reason she showed up at the Frankfurt game and sat across the stadium from Annie and her children was not to attract attention or make a point (although by doing so she accomplished both) it was so that Kairo Don’t be confused when Dad ran to hug Annie’s kids in the stands after the game, and not him.
While her father was playing, she told the Mail that Kairo was shouting: “Yes, dad… Brilliant shot, dad… My dad is in the right corner.”
But he added that he took him out of the stadium five minutes before the game ended to prevent Kairo from having to witness his father with another family. She didn’t want to ruin her “perfect day.”
It’s heartbreaking.
Lauryn is accused by her detractors, who are many – and here I must admit a mea culpa! – Of not helping but hurting her son by so publicly revealing her father’s extramarital relationship.
There is some truth to that accusation: she is a high-profile influencer and model who has gained a lot of publicity by going to Frankfurt.
But the question: was this the act of the vengeful ex-lover or that of a loving single mother trying to fulfill the dreams of her young son, whose greatest wish was to see his hero dad playing live for England in the Euro Cup as vice-captain? ? ?
Lauryn claims that Kyle’s betrayed wife, Annie, had set conditions to repair their marriage. One was that Kyle has no contact with Kairo, nor her ten-month-old daughter with Lauryn, barely older than Rezon, Annie and Kyle’s new son.
Kyle with his wife Annie Kilner and one of their children after last Thursday’s game.
For Kyle to agree to those terms, if he actually did, is not only cruel but also cowardly.
What kind of father can betray his own blood like this? And Annie must take some responsibility too. As much as it pains her, what mother can insist that her husband no longer have contact with her children, even if they were born out of wedlock?
Let’s not forget that when Lauryn became pregnant with Kairo, he and his long-suffering wife Annie were on a break. He had been kicked out of the family home after numerous lurid accusations about his insatiable sexual appetite.
Lauryn claims that at the time, she was not Kyle’s lover but his girlfriend, in what she believed was a loving and meaningful relationship.
Yes, during the brief second affair, which led to Lauryn becoming pregnant with a girl, she was the lover and he was a married man, and there is no excuse for either of them for that behavior.
However, it was heartbreaking for Lauryn to hear the man she loved dismiss what they had as nothing more than a moment of madness, while he was trying to save things with his wife.
Rubbing salt into a raw wound, he said: “There was no connection, would she even know how many sugars I have in my coffee, if I have sugar?”
It’s telling that Neanderthal Kyle thinks the test of a loving relationship is if a woman knows how he likes his coffee.
That takes the cake for arrogance, with a touch of narcissism, very common among football ‘aces’ like him.
At the center of this psychodrama is a little boy desperate for his father’s recognition and love. How sad for Kairo if Annie maintains her supposed prohibition of contact, of distancing herself from her father.
How terrible for Annie’s children too. It won’t be long before his eldest son, Roman, now 11, finds out about the antics of his cheating father and half-siblings he never knew about through social media and the schoolyard. .
Neither Lauryn nor Annie, but Kyle is the real monster here. He should take the blame for his cruelty towards them and the children.
They are going to all suffer the consequences of his weakness, his betrayal and his abandonment.
And if in the years to come he tries to reconcile with them when he’s a washed-up nobody after causing so much damage, good luck to him.