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Football

02nd Oct 2020

Aymeric Laporte changes Twitter name after fan confusion

Aymeric Laporte has changed his Twitter name for some good old fashioned banter after a fan claimed to think his name was Eric

Reuben Pinder

‘Who’s Eric?’

Aymeric Laporte has changed his Twitter name after a fan called him Eric on Twitter, apparently confused by the pronunciation of his Basque name.

The fan, Chris Phillips, said “Great to see you back Eric. Now please please stay fit for the whole season because we’re only complete when you’re playing.”

The City defender then responded, asking, “Who’s Eric?”

To which the fan, almost certainly on the wind up, said: “Your name is Eric right? I thought the “Aym” was just a funny way of writing “I’m” like I’m Eric Laporte.”

All Laporte could muster in response was three crying emojis.

The response to this was thousands of City fans all calling him Eric. Laporte reacted later by tweeting, “Sh*t my mentions, I’ve created a monster.”

He then, as you can already see, changed his name to I’mEric Laporte, proclaiming, “You guys won” – a sure way to endear himself to City fans even more than being their only good defender.

Now I have a theory about this.

A listener wrote in to the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast this week, making this exact joke about Laporte’s name. Did this fan copy his joke, and nab over a thousand Twitter likes in the process? Are they the same person? I don’t know, I can’t be bothered to listen back.

Either way it’s very funny and good to see a footballer express some semblance of personality on social media.