West Ham’s cult hero knows about gang culture and is determined to help kids with ‘boisterous’ lives find a better, calmer path“I had a short temper growing up,” Michail Antonio says. “When I was younger, from primary school to 14, you just needed to call me a dickhead and I’d have a fight with you. A physical fight. I don’t know why.”
An angry Antonio is difficult to picture. From afar the West Ham forward seems the happy type, a cult hero who always has a funny goal celebration up his sleeve, and this 29-year-old father of three does not disappoint when we meet at
Football Beyond Borders’ office in Brixton. Antonio has given up his Thursday evening to support FBB, an education charity that uses the power of football to support disadvantaged young people in the
United Kingdom, and it does not take long to understand how much community means to him.