West Ham announced that they will not investigate homophobic claims made by Patrice Evra within the 2018 squad. Evra claimed that some of his West Ham players would refuse to shower with gay players. He made the claims during an appearance on a podcast where he recalled an inclusivity talk given by a FA official. Moyes said he had no knowledge of any such instances.
“It’s like you can’t be a gay football player, people will go mad. 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.’ The number of players that were like, ‘No, if some of my teammates are gay they have to leave now, I won’t do any shower [with them],” former West Ham defender Patrice Evra said. “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.”
“The first thing I’d say is that I know nothing about it, so I couldn’t comment on it at all,” West Ham manager David Moyes said. “But I think times have even moved on from four years ago if that’s when you’re saying it was. I think lots of things have improved and everybody is much more aware of different situations. But I can’t comment on it because I don’t know anything about it.”
