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Matt Le Tissier and five other footballers who have been seduced by conspiracy theories

Southampton legend Matt Le Tissier has stepped down from his role as club ambassador following the controversy created by his latest conspiracy theory tweet.

Matt Le Tissier, who scored 161 goals in 443 games for Saints, is no stranger to divisive comments having been an outspoken critic of the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the theories he promoted was the suggestion that Christian Eriksen's cardiac arrest was as a result of being vaccinated. He also likened the policing of the Covid laws with the Holocaust and urged fans to "look beyond the headlines and government propaganda".

However, his latest tweet, which he later deleted, has resulted in Le Tissier walking away from the club he has been synonymous with since joining them in 1995.
He quote tweeted a post that read: "The media lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction, the media lied about Covid, the media lied about the Hunter Biden laptop, but honestly they are telling the truth about Bucha."
It prompted a backlash on Twitter, with the south-coast club caught up in the fallout and Le Tissier claimed it was the right thing to do to sever his ties with Saints.
Speaking on Twitter he said: "I have decided to step aside from my role as an ambassador of SFC. My views are my own and always have been, and it's important to take this step today to avoid any confusion."

Le Tissier is not the first footballer to spout ill-informed opinion as gospel, however, with England boss Gareth Southgate admitting that in the age of social media, players are "more open to some of these conspiracy theories".

It didn't take Planet Sport long to search out a few.

David Icke

One former footballer is not only susceptible to them, he is behind a fair few himself, too.
David Icke was a former youth goalkeeper with Coventry City before going on to make 39 appearances for Hereford United.
He went on to become a household name, presenting the sports news on the BBC and hosting Grandstand. However, in the days before Strictly, when boredom struck he instead chose to find God. Luckily for Icke, it turns out he was "son of the godhead" which enabled him to don a turquoise shellsuit, take on a second wife and proclaim that members of the ruling classes were actually reptiles.
"From 1998, I started coming across people who told me they had seen people change into a non-human form," he said. "It's an age-old phenomenon known as shape-shifting. The basic form is like a scaly humanoid, with reptilian rather than humanoid eyes."

Despite the world failing to end in 1997 as he predicted it would, Icke has continued to attract legions of followers thanks to a constant stream of bizarre claims, the latest being that Covid-19 is linked to 5g masts.

He doesn't even believe the moon exists, which will blow the mind of the next man on our list, also a former keeper.

Iker Casillas

For a man so used to dealing with spherical objects, Iker Casillas proved surprisingly dubious when it came to the history of our most visible one.

The Spaniard, capped 167 times for his country, was at a dinner party in 2018 and nailed his colours to the mast with a tweet which suggested the moon landings were faked.
"Next year will be 50 years of the (supposed) moon landing. I'm at a dinner with friends arguing about it. Do you think man stepped on the moon? I don't think so!"
The accompanying poll saw a surprisingly close 58.5%-41.5% split in favour of the landings being real and prompted a savage response from one aeronautical engineer: "So the hundreds of engineers and scientists who have worked and who work at NASA suffer from collective hypnosis. Plus we're crazy about spending thousands of hours in the space mission control base trying to carry out imaginary missions."
Maybe we should just be thankful Casillas didn't post a poll on whether the moon exists.

Carlos Roa

There's definitely something about goalkeepers and conspiracy theories, with former Argentina No. 1 Roa giving up the game for his outlandish beliefs.
Less than a year after saving a penalty from David Batty to knock England out of the 1998 World Cup, 30-year-old Roa waked out on Mallorca to retreat to a farm in rural Argentina. There the Seventh-day Adventist preached and carried out charity work safe in the knowledge the world was about to end.
"The year 2000 is going to be difficult," declared Roa whose veganism had already marked him out as 'different'. "In the world, there is war, hunger, plague, much poverty, floods. I can assure you that those people who don't have a spiritual connection with God and the type of life that he wants will be in trouble."
The Argentine, whose temporary retirement scuppered a proposed move to Manchester United, subsequently returned to play for Mallorca when Armageddon failed to materialise.
However, he was now refusing to play Sundays, a policy which would have ruled him out of Argentina's first two matches of France '98.

Dejan Lovren

Not a goalkeeper but a fan of David Icke's work, who he has promoted, Lovren is showing solid Champions League form when it comes to conspiracy theories.

The former Liverpool defender was in the news recently for cancelling his Disney+ subscription after Disney posted a statement on their Twitter account in support of LGBTQ+ rights.

His move prompted a backlash from Reds fans and came hot on the heels of Lovren's anti-vax stance.
The Croat suggested coronavirus was a ploy to force the general public into vaccinations.
The defender left a comment under Bill Gates' Instagram post thanking healthcare workers stating: "Game over Bill. People are not blind".
Lovren also referred to himself as being part of "the resistance", the ultimate irony from someone who offered so little of it on the pitch.

Nathan Eccleston

We stay with Liverpool for our final entry, though the highlight of this player's Anfield stay was not a Champions League win but a missed penalty in their 2010 League Cup shootout defeat to Northampton Town.
Nevertheless, Eccleston was initially a big deal, signed from Bury as a 15-year-old and making his debut for the Reds aged 18.
However, he's possibly better remembered for being investigated by the Reds for suggesting the 9/11 terrorist attacks were carried out by the Illuminati.
On the tenth anniversary of the attacks, Eccleston tweeted: "I aint going to say attack don't let the media make u believe that was terrorist that did it. #O.T.I.S. ['Only the Illuminati Succeed']."
The punishment was never revealed but less than a year later he was working under Ian Holloway at Blackpool, so you can draw your own conclusions.

READ MORE: Manchester City vs Liverpool is not a title decider, insists Reds boss Jurgen Klopp

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