England defender Lucy Bronze says there needs to be greater education around the LGBTQ+ community in men’s football in the wake of Carles Puyol joking about Iker Casillas’s Twitter account claim he was gay.
A tweet from the former goalkeeper’s official account on Sunday said: “I hope I’ll be respected: I’m gay”, along with the hashtag “happy Sunday”.
Barcelona defender Puyol then replied to the post saying: “It’s time to tell our story, Iker”, along with heart and kiss emojis.
Casillas then later deleted the post, claiming he was hacked, while Puyol apologised for “a clumsy joke”.
“I have made a mistake,” he wrote. “Sorry for a clumsy joke with no bad intentions and totally out of place. I understand that it may have hurt sensitivities. All my respect and support for the LGTBIQA+ community (sic).”
The incident has been widely condemned and Bronze believes it shows that greater education is needed.
“Obviously at the beginning no one really knew it was a joke,” she said.
“But I think the reaction that has been had on social media in general, from not knowing what it was to thinking it was a joke to being hacked…the reaction just shows that there still needs a lot of education, openness on these kind of subjects because that kind of reaction wasn’t normal.
“Whether it was a joke or not, I don’t know Casillas so I don’t know, but I think it shows there are still a lot of education and conversations that need to be had to make the world and the social media world a better place and more comfortable to have open conversations when they are real.”
