Former Real Madrid and Spain national team goalkeeper Iker Casillas deleted his tweet saying, “I hope you can respect me: I’m gay,” stating that it had been hacked.
Casillas’ tweet in Spanish remained on the platform for about an hour before being deleted.
Casillas later tweeted that he apologized to all of his followers and the LGBT community, saying he had been hacked.
His teammate Carles Puyol, with whom he was running the ball in Spain, replied to Casillas before deleting his tweet and shared a photo with a kiss emoji and said, “It’s time to tell our story.”
Puyol also stated that after Casillas’ tweet was deleted, he apologized for his “unscrupulous humor” and stated that he “paid his respect to the LGTBIQA+ community”.
However, Josh Cavallo, who plays for Australian football team Adelaide United and announced that he is gay last October, reacted by saying that Casillas and Puyol made fun of this issue.
Emphasizing that LGBTQ+ individuals have gone through a difficult path, Cavallo wrote that it was disappointing to make fun of football players who declared that they were gay:
“It’s disrespectful for my role models and football legends to make fun of the community I belong to.”
Few male players in football can openly disclose that they are gay.
Earlier this year, 17-year-old Jake Daniels, who played for Blackpool, became the first player in the English men’s leagues to come out as gay in 30 years and still play.
Retiring in 2020, Casillas divorced his wife, Sara Carbonero, in March.