In a playful move, Greek tennis player Petros Tsitsipas has sent an invitation to Aston Villa Women's star Alisha Lehmann to play mixed doubles.
According to Sport Bible, the cheeky request was sent via Instagram after Lehmann showcased her impressive tennis skills while on international duty with Switzerland.
Lehmann shared photos of herself and her teammates wielding tennis racquets, catching Tsitsipas's eye. He couldn't resist the urge to invite her to a mixed doubles match.
Adding a tennis ball and eye emoji, Tsitsipas asked Alisha Lehmann in her comment section:
"Let's play mixed?"
Her response to Tsitsipas' invitation was just as playful, with the forward accepting the challenge and adding a laughing face and tennis ball emoji to her response:
"Let's go!"
Boasting an astonishing 11.8 million Instagram followers, Lehmann is a popular figure on social media, where she has made a name for herself with her infectious personality and dynamic content. However, the Swiss international is more than just a social media personality, having played for West Ham and Everton before joining Aston Villa.
Alisha Lehmann discusses women's football in England
The Aston Villa player has revealed that she's interested in using her massive social media platform to promote women's football. Along with her nearly 12 million followers on Instagram, the Swiss forward has over six million followers on Tiktok.
In an interview with TalkSPORT (via SportBible), she talked about women's football:
“England probably is the picture everyone should look at because I don’t think in other countries it increased that much. In Switzerland, for example, everyone’s still working. 90 per cent probably still work."
She continued:
“I don’t think you can compare like anything between women’s and men’s football because it’s just so different how people look at us and how people look at them."
Alisha Lehmann pointed about the gap between women's and men's football, explaining that social media has helped in promoting the former:
“It’s just not the same. Women’s football is always second-class. I don’t think you’ll ever be first class because I think a lot of people still think that men’s football is the first priority.
“They don’t think about women’s football, and I think that’s a big problem. Now social media is really helpful because people actually see, oh, we play football. We can play football.”