DON’T put together your Christmas hen like this! Patrice Evra shocked the sporting world along with his ‘attractive uncooked hen’ video seven years in the past – and Man United legend nonetheless regrets weird antics

Few people go through life ever feeling the need to suck on a raw chicken but, in rather seductive fashion, Patrice Evra is one of them. 

Let me take you back to November 2018. A consequential month for humankind. The Brexit draft plan was approved. NASA‘s Voyager 2 reached interstellar space. And Evra released one of the most sickening videos on the internet.

There’s no way to dress it up – not even with copious amounts of gravy. Evra’s culinary adventure quite simply stunned the nation. Shocking and sultry in equal measure, yes. Hygienic? No chance. But perhaps that’s no surprise; Manchester United haven’t exactly been famed on that front recently. 

Evra regrets it to this day.

What is this video, you ask? I’ll explain – but only on the condition that you promise not to try this at home, at least not until you’ve cooked your chicken anyway. We’re not savages. 

Basically, it’s a minute of Evra kissing and licking and sucking and biting and spanking a raw chicken. All while staring down the camera with a gaze steamy enough to melt a snowman. 

‘I love this game!’ Evra cries at the climax of the video. ‘Happy Thanksgiving everyone!’ The only thing viewers were thankful for was that the video was over. 

And yet, by some irresistible magic, people watched it again. And again. And again. The public could not tear their eyes away. Was Christmas about to be ruined? Would, God forbid, impressionable young adults across the nation take after Evra’s habits for their first attempt at making a Christmas dinner? 

Evra apologised the following day. ‘I went too far when I sucked the toes of the chicken,’ the then-West Ham star admitted in a new video, all while slurping on his thumb. ‘It was a little bit nasty.’ 

Then followed a bizarre, tongue-in-cheek rant. It’s best his tongue stayed there. ‘Now people are wishing salmonella on me,’ he said. ‘I know salmon, but apparently salmonella is when a girl kisses you, you can die straight away or have diarrhoea for 10 years.

‘And what about the vegan people? I see vegan people in my garden crawling, eating all the grass. I didn’t say anything! They eat everything: the flowers, the grass, even the tree now. We need trees. I love this game!’

Now, now. We should take this in context. Evra, a Manchester United legend with 20 career trophies to his name, has always been a slapstick chap. He’s known for being a tad eccentric. This was nothing more than a joke in a time when footballers weren’t quite as controlled on social media. 

So we shouldn’t mock too heavily. We all have actions we regret. Some just don’t involve lifeless chickens. 

Last year, Evra denied he had ever licked the inanimate egg-layer (we’ll need VAR on that one, Patrice) but admitted that he ‘regrets’ it.

‘I just slapped the chicken, I didn’t lick it – look at the video, I didn’t lick the chicken!’ e protested on the Stick to Football podcast.

‘When I did that video, it was Thanksgiving in America, but I don’t care about Thanksgiving, so I was making a joke about it, you know, “When you eat your chicken, you fall in love with it.” It was sexual.

‘It was crazy because it also affected my son because at school, they were like, “Your dad eats raw chicken,” or whatever. So, of course I regret that video, but in that moment, I was that crazy.

‘I remember, I was in Switzerland, and there was a lady with her husband, and she looked at me like, “I know you!” And her husband says, “Of course you know him, it’s Patrice Evra.” And she said, “No, I’ve seen him somewhere… that guy was licking a chicken!”‘

A worldwide impact, then. But maybe there was something behind this. It turns out that the Frenchman already had a history with poultry. 

Believe it or not, Evra, who won five Premier League titles and a Champions League with United, believes his move to Old Trafford in 2006 may never have happened were it not for chicken. 

In 2005, a foot injury on France under-21s duty had him sweating over his future. 

Speaking to the Players’ Tribune, the former left-back recalls how he could barely walk after suffering the issue. Then somebody had an idea. 

‘Someone from the club staff said, “Why don’t you just go old school? Just slide a chicken down the boot,”‘ he said. 

‘It sounded crazy but, you know me, I’m open minded. So I went to my local butcher. The butcher said, “What do you want?” 

‘I said, “A piece of chicken. But just a tiny one. I’m gonna put it in my boot”.

‘He just laughed. I went home with the chicken. I ordered new boots: one in size 42.5, the other in size 44. I passed the ball. Oh. That felt OK. Painful, but OK. So I ended up playing with chicken in my boot for four months.

‘I didn’t train with it – my mother would never have forgiven me for wasting food – but before every game I would visit the butcher. “Morning, Patrice. The usual, yeah?”

‘The chicken enabled me to play so well that, in January 2006, I was signed by Manchester United.’

Now you know. Chicken launched Evra’s Man United career. Maybe we can’t blame him for such an enthusiastic act 12 years later.