Aymeric Laporte changes Twitter name after fan confusion

'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." 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." https://twitter.com/Laporte/status/1311594387772764161 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. https://twitter.com/Laporte/status/1311964089565011969 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.