Players from the three Israeli clubs refused to participate in the LGBT support campaign and wear rainbow heart T-shirts before their national championship games. DEA News With reference to the Ynet post.
The action was supposed to take place on February 4. Players were required to take the field in white T-shirts with rainbow hearts.
Hapoel’s Romanian football player Adrian Paun from the city of Beer Sheva was the first to refuse to participate in the action, covering the image of the heart by lifting his shirt in a joint photo.
Then, nine Bnei Sakhnin players and three Hapoel players from Kiryat Shmona did not pose with their rainbow heart jerseys.
Some fans were outraged by the players’ decision and demanded that the Israel Football Federation punish the players, describing their behavior as a manifestation of intolerance.
Earlier, Russian defender of the Philadelphia Flyers club of the National Hockey League (NHL), Ivan Provorov, refused to go to the pre-match, where the players held an LGBT support rally – they wore rainbow sweaters and used rainbow sticks. The only representative of the team that chose not to participate in the event and remained in the locker room was the Russian.
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