Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Jose Enrique, Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol, Football
Adnan Riaz
Former Liverpool defender Jose Enrique has slammed fellow countryman Iker Casillas after a tweet from his Twitter account jokingly suggested that he was gay.
Fans were stunned last Sunday after Casillas’ Twitter page sent out a message claiming that he was coming out before it was later deleted.
“I hope you respect me: I'm gay,” Casillas’ tweet said in Spanish.
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Barcelona legend Carles Puyol added to fans’ confusion at the time after he responded to former Spain teammate Casillas.
“It's time to tell our story,” he tweeted.
Casillas later took to Twitter and claimed that his account had been hacked, with the former Real Madrid No 1 issuing an apology to the LGBT community.
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“Hacked account. Luckily everything [was] in order. Apologies to all my followers,” he tweeted to his 9.7m followers.
“Of course, more apologies to the LGBT community.”
Enrique, 36, doesn’t believe that Casillas was hacked and blasted the Madrid and Spain legend for sending out what he believes was a poorly conceived joke.
Speaking to Midnite, he said: “Listen, I don’t know what happened, because I wasn’t there. But with Puyol replying to it, it doesn’t look right.
“In Spain, they are linking Casillas with many women all the time now after he got separated from his wife, and they were together for a long time. He’s tired of it, but what he tweeted was wrong.
“There will be players out there who are gay, who maybe want to come out and they thought in seeing Casillas, there could be an opportunity if someone like him was coming out.
“For me, I could see straight away it was a joke, in my opinion. But it is not something you should joke about. When he says it’s a hack, in my opinion, it was not.
“All of a sudden you get your account back in five minutes? It doesn’t make sense to me.
“For me, it was a mistake from him and instead of recognising and apologising, he said he got hacked, although we will never truly know.
“But it’s not something you should joke about because it’s something that is hard for gay players, although I don’t know any, to deal with and to come out.
“The impact of social media, and the stadiums, you could go there and the fans can be difficult.
“I don’t think he meant it in a bad way. But sometimes you have to think about the damage you can cause when you say something like that.”
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Puyol, much like Casillas, took to Twitter and issued an apology by admitting that he made a “mistake” and it was a “clumsy joke.”
“I have made a mistake. Sorry for a clumsy joke with no bad intentions and totally out of place,” he tweeted.
“All my respect and support for the LGTBIQA+ community.”
However, Puyol and Casillas were met with widespread backlash for the tweet, with openly gay footballer Josh Cavallo dropping a scathing attack on the pair.