English football club Manchester United has scrapped a plan for its players to wear a jacket in support of LGBTQ+ community during the Premier League after Moroccan defender Noussair Mazraoui refused to join the initiative.
Notably, the Premier League is showing support for the LGBTQ+ community through the ‘Rainbow Laces Campaign’, in which the clubs are asked to show support to the cause.
Accordingly, Premier League players are wearing rainbow boot laces and rainbow captain’s armbands. Moreover, the stadiums are being adorned with rainbows, including corner flags, ball plinths, handshake boards, pitchside advertising boards and substitute boards. As part of this campaign, Manchester United had decided that its players will wear a rainbow-themed Adidas jacket.
In the past two seasons, the team’s players had been wearing pride-themed jersey during the warm ups ahead of the games, and also wore similar pro-LGBTQ+ themed jackets while entering the grounds. However, this year team’s Muslim player Noussair Mazraoui refused to do so, saying that Islam does not permit this.
As a result, the team decided that no player will wear the jacket, so that Mazraoui is not the only one to be seen without the jacket in public. Reportedly, not everyone in the team was happy with the decision.
