Patrice Evra claims homophobic West Ham players wanted gay footballers to leave the club
Football Association diversity officer offers an insight into the animosity an LGBT player could experience.The 40-year-old, who had previously played for clubs including Manchester United, Juventus, and AS Monaco, said that he was shocked by just how many West Ham players said they would want a gay team-mate to leave the club.‘It’s like you can’t be a gay football player, people will go mad,’ Evra told Gabby Logan on the Mid Point podcast.‘I give the example, when I was playing for West Ham, someone from the English federation came and he said “we need to accept everyone” and the amount of players that were like “no, if some of my team mates are gay they have to leave now.
I won’t do any shower [with them]”.Two Manchester United stars pulled apart after 'shocking' bust-up in training'Lost the plot' - Paul Merson slams Mikel Arteta after Arsenal's defeat to SpursJude Bellingham makes transfer decision amid Man Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool links‘I stand up and I say “shut up, shut up everyone, can you hear yourselves?” We still don’t accept everyone.
In the football world they are not open minded enough and it’s a shame.’A 2017 survey from the BBC and Ipsos Mori found that 34 percent of people aged 16-22 in the United Kingdom did not define as exclusively heterosexual, while an alternative study by Kantar TNS in the same year found that seven percent of British men identified as homosexual, and five percent as bisexual.The only current top-flight player in world football to publicly identify as gay is 22-year-old Josh Cavallo, the Adelaide United left-back whose story was widely shared when he came out in an emotional social media last October. ‘I hope that in sharing who I am, I can show others who identify as LGBTQ+ that.
