After finishing his successful football career, Patrice Evra became, as he said himself ‘a citizen of the world’ and decided to tell stories about his past, comment on football clubs and their matches, and make funny social media stories (see Liam Gallagher imitation). In short, Evra is all over the place. Ahead of the release of his autobiography ‘I love this game’, Evra gave an interview with Le Parisien, where he talked, among other things, about two very ‘tricky’ topics in football: homosexuality and racism. Patrice Evra: We are the ‘monkeys’, no one cares about the African Cup of Nations, Lewandowski was robbedAnd apparently, there are gay players in football, and Evra knows them. In England, he played for Manchester United and West Ham, in Italy for Marsala, Monza, and Juventus and in France, he played for Nica, Monaco, and Marseille. “When I was in England, they brought someone to talk to the team about homosexuality. Some of my colleagues said “it is against my religion, if there is a homosexual in this locker room, let him leave the club” and other comments. At that time, I said, “shut up”. I played with players who were gay. Face to face, they opened up with me because they are afraid to speak otherwise. There are at least two players per club who are gay. But in the world of football, if you say so, it’s over” said Evra. Luis Suarez escaped a punch from Patrice Evra twiceFormer France international also made quite an accurate comment on racism, which seems to be an eternal subject, without a possible end. And Evra thinks money is probably the reason for it. “We have to stop pretending to fight against racism and being hypocrites. Take the example of the Super League. The debate was everywhere. I watched for four days how the media, supporters, everyone came together for a cause in football, against a project that hadn’t even started. FIFA, UEFA, the authorities, and football’s big names did everything to stop the project in less than 24 hours. When I watched that, I said, “why don’t we have that same energy against racism?”. It’s because, with racism, we aren’t hitting their pockets. The Super League project was going to take away a lot of money. Fighting against racism doesn’t interest anyone because it isn’t losing clubs any money. For me, banning racists from stadiums is not the solution. The racist individual will go home and carry on being racist. That’s why I think we need to reach out to these people and even try to understand them” explained Evra.
