Patrice Evra on Man United, racism and toxic masculinity: 'As a player, I had to be an animal'

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You have to hide your emotions. You are just there to win.” For many years, Evra did win: five Premier League titles and a Champions League with Manchester United, two scudetti with Juventus, and 12 cup competitions across his career in England, Italy and France with Monaco. As an interviewee, he is compelling. He will regale you with stories about Sir Alex Ferguson’s final weeks as United manager (Evra claims Ferguson was plotting to sign Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale), the ins and outs of Champions League finals (Evra played in five, winning one) or how he really felt when his friend Carlos Tevez left United for Manchester City: “I called him and said ‘I’m going to kill you!’.” But Evra’s life is one of extremes; so talk of triumphs also gives way to reflections on trauma. He speaks with lived experience when he conveys football’s enduring battles against racism, 15 years on from being racially abused by Luis Suarez. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, he also speaks, with rare candour, about just how difficult footballers find it to be vulnerable among their peers. In retirement, Evra has dabbled in television punditry and entrepreneurship. He is speaking to The Athletic from Phoenix, Arizona, where he is attending a conference by the Pro Athlete Community (PAC), essentially a network where athletes (mainly from U.S. sports) meet with executives, founders and investors to exchange ideas and make introductions. Evra has also dipped his toes into mixed martial arts, last year training for five hours per day to prepare for an amateur fight, which in the end did not happen. “It wasn’t to go viral,” Evra insists. “I like the discipline. People think it is just violent, but it is like a chess game.” An obsessive as a player, Evra fought to reach the top of European football and fought even harder to stay there. He was one of 24 siblings, the son of a Senegalese father and Cape Verdean mother. He was born in Dakar and moved to Brussels as a baby, before the family relocated to Paris when Evra was a toddler. Money was tight. He grew up among the suburban tower blocks of Les Ulis, the south-west district of Paris where Thierry Henry also took his formative steps in football. “I come from a tough childhood,” Evra says. “That’s when I built my character and my personality.” Evra revealed in his autobiography that he was sexually abused by his headteacher when he was only 13. As a young footballer starting in the Italian lower leagues in Sicily, Evra says they were “doing the monkey noises or throwing me a banana” every time he received the ball. When he made it to the big time, there were flashpoints. Suarez, then of Liverpool, was banned for eight matches after racially abusing Evra in 2011. Evra, as captain of the French national team, led a player mutiny against coach Raymond Domenech at the World Cup in 2010, while Evra’s time at Marseille ended when he kicked a fan whom Evra claimed had abused his family members. For much of his career, Evra says he tried to block out his feelings, almost disassociating his true self from the character we saw on the field. He says he has softened through age, fatherhood and meeting his wife, Margaux. “I say to my wife, ‘I’m glad I met you now, because if I met her during my career, it wouldn’t have worked’,” he says. “I couldn’t have been softer. I had to be an animal. “She got rid of some of my toxic masculinity. When I say that, we still need some of it. But she helped me to be more emotional. Crying was a weakness for me before. This is how I grew up. I had a lot of trauma, all that stuff inside. Now, by meeting the right person and opening myself up, I feel stronger and happier. When you see your kids playing around, you get more soft. But you must also be straightforward with them because it’s not an easy world outside.” Evra waited until his career was over to speak about the sexual abuse he endured. In his playing days, he saw vulnerability as a defect. “It’s a toxic world in sport. You cannot even come and say you are sad. Thierry Henry was doing an interview where he was saying we do not allow ourselves to be depressed. I have many friends who have been in depression, but for me this (would have been) a luxury. I could not afford to be depressed; I had to lead a team.” He tells a story about a plane journey with Juventus, when a player cried while watching a movie. At the baggage carousel, this became a talking point. “They were saying ‘Boss, you want us to go to the war when we have our team-mate crying because he watches a movie?’. Everyone was laughing. Now the new Patrice will be like, ‘Oh s***, maybe it’s OK to cry watching a movie’. But in the sports world, you could not open yourself. “If you cry, for any reason, people won’t respect you. It’s tough.” Even the new Evra has shades of the old. While football’s culture needed to evolve, he now worries it may have gone too far. “The new generation got too much help,” he says. “Now, if you have any issue, if you’re playing bad, it is because ‘I’m not feeling good’. Back in the day, you do not have a choice to say, ‘I’m not feeling good’. Now, it’s too many excuses. They have the mental help, the social help, we didn’t have that. I respect that, but sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes you have to go against the wall to become stronger. “We didn’t have all those analytics. Now there is a guy with his computer and you feel like he’s smarter than the manager. I’m happy to use the technology, but the technology can’t come before the human side.” Evra believes players now have more outside interests. He retired in 2019 and towards the end, he saw team-mates scrolling social media at half-time of games, sometimes even checking what fans were saying about their performances. “I didn’t get angry,” he shrugs. “This is the TikTok generation. I am on social media. I have fun. Before, we were fully football players, so you eat and sleep football. Now they are athletes. An athlete is different than just a football player. They are models, they are in fashion, they are politicians, they are rappers. It’s so many distractions. But I don’t blame them. “But you won’t have the same result. You won’t have a player like Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo with so many years of consistency. For these young players, they’re going to have two or three (great) seasons and they’re going to be done because the football is not (always) the priority. But to say that is not to blame them. This is society. That is the world changing.” If the world changes in some ways, it also stays the same. When Evra accused Suarez of racism, he was met by denials and bad-faith attacks on his character. In February, Real Madrid’s Champions League game against Benfica was halted after an incident of alleged racist abuse towards Vinicius Junior by Gianluca Prestianni. The Benfica player denied the allegation, which is being investigated by UEFA, but coach Jose Mourinho suggested Vincius Jr had provoked fans with his celebrations. “It’s sad,” Evra says. “Vinicius has to still go on and on and on about it. He’s the man targeted, that’s what he will feel. “This is about the authorities, not just football. It needs to be condemned as a crime. I’m a really positive person, but we have a lot of work to do. “When those things happen, you feel injustice because, even if you are the one who says what happened, people (who are accused) will play the victim. That’s (what) happened with Luis Suarez and that’s now what happened with Vinicius. People complain more about his attitude. They say: ‘Why is he dancing, why is he provoking?’. They give an excuse to a person to call him names just because he’s dancing when he’s scored a goal.” What did that moment feel like when he heard the insult from Suarez on the Anfield pitch? “It was tough because the angel (in your head) says, ‘Patrice, don’t do anything because this is one of the biggest games in the world’, but then you have that demon saying, ‘Punch him in the face’. You start talking to yourself. If you punch him, you’re going to be the villain and you’re going to show a bad example. So, you have to contain yourself. I was really proud I didn’t react. Then we made the report and the next day it was breaking news all over. I didn’t want this attention. “When I defended my case, I said, ‘I don’t know Luis Suarez well enough to call him a racist’. I just said, ‘In that moment, he used some racist words’. I won the case. But when I played against Suarez in the final of the Champions League for Juventus against Barcelona, I shook his hand.” Evra says he rejected outreach from FIFA to be part of anti-racism campaigns, saying it ought to be a matter for the law. “But is the punishment a solution?” he wonders. “I don’t know… I’m involved in a lot of education and meeting kids, because I want to understand where it comes from. You don’t wake up as a racist person. It also goes both ways. You can be Asian and racist. You can be Black and racist. You can be white and racist. It’s not about one side. It just exists.” As Evra talks, it becomes easy to understand why Ferguson admired him so much at United, often making him his captain in his final seasons. Evra says the pair still speak a few times per month, saying they share a father-and-son bond. They met in Dubai recently, Evra was late and Ferguson stood, pointing at his watch, like the manager used to do to fourth officials in the dugout. “I said, ‘Boss, I call you boss out of respect, but you’re not my boss anymore, so chill out!’.” When Evra speaks about United, he is lucid on the good times and the bad. He recalls the 2008 semi-final against Barcelona, which United won over two legs on the way to Champions League success. Ferguson’s team-talk piled pressure on Evra, anticipating the Frenchman would respond positively. “He said: ‘Guys, this is a big game but if we lose, I will blame Patrice Evra’. Oh, s***! “He said, ‘Apparently you’re playing against the best player in the world, Lionel Messi, blah blah blah. If you don’t stop him today, we’re going to all blame you’. “So I was thinking, ‘OK, first time playing against Messi’. Thank God, it went very well. After that first leg, I could see in the eyes of Gary Neville, all the other players, the respect. ‘Now we got a full-back’. This was how Sir Alex Ferguson managed people and characters.” At United, Evra became close friends with Tevez, who controversially joined neighbours City in the summer of 2009. The pair remain in contact, last month spending time with former United team-mate Park Ji-sung. “It was painful, man,” Evra says of Tevez’s move across Manchester. “It was heartbreaking. I couldn’t believe it. It was after the Champions League final (which United lost 2-0 against Barcelona) and he didn’t start. He had a beef with Ferguson. ‘Tevez was like ‘They didn’t offer me nothing’. I saw it on holiday. Boom! Tevez is joining Manchester City. I called him and said, ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to break your legs Carlito’. “This was too painful. It was difficult to swallow. But I think this was a payback to Sir Alex Ferguson. That’s why I was disappointed, because at the end, you will never know the true story. But we paid the price heavily. If Tevez didn’t sign for City, I don’t think they would even start winning one league. You feel betrayed, but he is still my brother. You have to respect his choice.” When Evra recalls the 2009 final defeat in Rome, he attributes the loss against Barcelona to “arrogance”. United were seeking consecutive Champions League triumphs and had just won a third Premier League title in succession. “And I put myself first in that,” Evra admits. “We should have not been arrogant. That’s it. We were too confident. We were like, ‘No chance Barcelona is gonna beat us’. I remember even after the game, I was still thinking I was dreaming. They battered us.” In 2011, the two clubs met again at Wembley. Pep Guardiola’s team were even more dominant in a 3-1 win. “The biggest story was (Barcelona defender and Evra’s France international team-mate) Eric Abidal. He is like my brother. He had recovered from cancer. I went to see him in Barcelona and I couldn’t believe the state he was in. He was sending me pictures during his recovery. “It’s the only final I lost when I smiled. I saw Eric lifting the trophy and that was bigger than the Champions League final. For all the United fans, for myself, of course I was disappointed. But my mind wasn’t (only) on the pitch in that final.” When Ferguson retired in 2013, Evra says he was caught by surprise. “I couldn’t believe it because one week before that, I went to Ferguson’s office and he said, ‘Patrice, 99 per cent, Cristiano Ronaldo is coming and I’m going to bring Gareth Bale too. And those people who think I’m going to retire? I’m going to retire when I’m maybe 100 years old’. I couldn’t understand it. It was a big shock. “I remember driving home and my car was in auto drive. We had a meeting in the dressing room and Ferguson wasn’t wearing a tracksuit. I said, ‘This is bad news, all the players are going to get killed or something is going to happen’. He said I’m retired. But I still thought it was a joke and he would change his mind.” Did Evra think United would go 13 years after Ferguson’s retirement without even challenging for the Premier League? “After the best manager in the world, it will always be a tough job,” he says. “We did some disaster recruitment. David Moyes came; maybe the suit was too big for him. It’s been painful to watch United. But now with Michael Carrick, at least we can dream of a Champions League spot. It’s very difficult to say that because when I was at United, the goal — not the dream — was to win four trophies per season.” Carrick, his former team-mate, has taken seven wins, two draws and a defeat from 10 Premier League games as interim head coach. Evra describes him as a “smart person”. “Always calm,” Evra says. “He never panics. He is efficient. When you had a player like Carrick in your team, you feel relaxed. That’s what I feel with him: relaxed, safe.” Should he get the job full-time? “I’m living the present. He needs to qualify for the Champions League. Some people say he doesn’t have the experience. But we did that in the past. We bring Mourinho, we bring Louis van Gaal, we bring Ruben Amorim and it didn’t work. Now it is working, so let’s see!” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Adam Crafton is a British journalist based in New York City, having relocated from London in 2024. He primarily covers soccer for The Athletic. In 2024, he was named the Sports Writer of the Year by the Sports' Journalist Association, after winning the Young Sports Writer of the Year award in 2018. Follow Adam on Twitter @AdamCrafton_