Reaction to Iker Casillas – Carles Puyol coming out tweets
Puyol #Puyol
Iker Casillas and Carles Puyol have come under-fire for now deleted tweets announcing that they are gay.
The World Cup winners exchanged a tweets early on Sunday, with Casillas stating ‘I hope you respect me, I’m gay’, and former teammate Puyol replying to said tweet saying ‘It’s time to tell our story, Iker’.
After a number of hours, Casillas deleted the aforementioned tweet, claiming that his account was hacked in a follow up tweet: “Hacked account. Luckily everything in order. Apologies to all my followers. And of course, more apologies to the LGBT community.”
The claim that the single tweet came from someone who had hacked his account however, especially given the fact that the hacker used the opportunity to post just once, was quite hard to believe for many.
And understandably so.
And even despite the apology and the claim that he was hacked being genuine or not, the damage had already been done in many ways.
One look at the replies to Casillas’ original tweet revealed just how much the ex-goalkeeper’s ‘joke’ had emboldened droves of homophobic football fans across social media.
It is clear that Casillas and Puyol’s actions set back progress that has been made regarding inclusivity in the game, with people rightfully pointing out that the two ex-players have made it more difficult for current footballers to come out as gay.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of Casillas and Puyol came from Josh Cavallo, the Adelaide United defender who came out as gay in October 2021. Carvallo labelled the tweets as ‘beyond disrespectful’, stating: “Iker Casillas and Carles Puyol joking and making fun out of coming out in football is disappointing,” he tweeted. “It’s a difficult journey that any LGBTQ+ people have to go through. To see my role models and legends of the game make fun out of coming out and my community is beyond disrespectful.”