French TV disavows female presenter\u2019s childbirth barb at Belgium\u2019s Jeremy Doku <\/p>\n
PARIS \u2014 French sports media leader L\u2019\u00c9quipe has disavowed comments by a female presenter who criticized Belgium winger Jeremy Doku for wanting to leave the World Cup to be at the birth of his first child.<\/p>\n
L\u2019\u00c9quipe also apologized to Doku in a statement late Sunday and said the comments by France Pierron did not represent its values.<\/p>\n
Pierron described childbirth as \u201ca disgusting moment, excuse me, where the dad is useless\u201d when taking part in the television show \u201cL\u2019\u00c9quipe de Choc\u201d on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are hundreds of footballers who would kill to be in your place,\u201d she said on the show, reacting to Doku\u2019s comments in the United States.<\/p>\n
Doku\u2019s wife Shireen is due to give birth to their son in early July when Belgium hopes to be playing in the knockout rounds of the World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one wants to miss a birth,\u201d said the 24-year-old Doku, who is a star in the Belgium squad and plays for Manchester City.<\/p>\n
Pierron questioned Doku\u2019s priorities as he was \u201cliving a childhood dream. It might never happen again in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was unclear if Pierron would be part of Monday\u2019s scheduled broadcast of the talk show on the cable channel run by the storied daily sports newspaper.<\/p>\n
Doku received support from England forward Ollie Watkins, who was asked about the family choices facing players.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said it only happens once, your first child. Welcoming them to the world is a blessing,\u201d Watkins said during a news conference at the England training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone labeled it disgusting. And I think for a start that\u2019s not a way to label a birth. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s anyone else\u2019s business what he gets up to after training,\u201d Watkins said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French TV disavows female presenter\u2019s childbirth barb at Belgium\u2019s Jeremy Doku PARIS \u2014 French sports media leader L\u2019\u00c9quipe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[149118,217,11190,149119,2424,7999,48,52,51,3556,47,50,49,63,24644,24026,13824,30755,5571],"class_list":["post-370282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-daily-recap","tag-day","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-four-game-slate","tag-friday","tag-highlight","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-live-update","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-memorable-moment","tag-plenty","tag-result","tag-standing","tag-tv-schedule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}