Patrice Evra: Former France star opens up about sexual abuse by a team-mate that is still haunted by the experience
26 September 2006 16:00
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This article is more than 10 years old
This article is more than 10 years old
It may be the worst abuse in football history, but one of France’s greatest footballers still has a terrible memory of the time he was attacked at a nightclub in Marseilles by his own team-mate.
The attacker, Patrice Evra, who plays for FC Nantes, is haunted by a night he says he would rather forget, and now he is going public with his memories to try to open people’s eyes to how men can act in a game of football with too much testosterone.
The incident happened in 1998 at a club where many of the players on the French club’s pre-season tour were in a gay club on the same night. Evra’s team-mate was drunk and attacked Evra following an argument at one of the clubs, according to reports in French Le Parisien and France Football. Evra told the magazine, which has published his autobiography, “I only wish I could say that I saw one of the attackers, but I didn’t – but I saw his face, and the look in his eyes. It has been a huge trauma for me.”
Evra, who has a reputation for being one of the most gifted players in France, left France’s top-flight top-flight side FC Nantes last September after his wife, Gisèle Bienvenue, filed for a divorce in April.
When he joined Marseilles after being allowed to join a second-tier club, he got the message that the team were not too keen on his abilities. “They said my career would be over before it started, because I’m a man,” he told Le Parisien.
But he had a good season for the team and made it to the World Cup, where France ultimately
