Patrice Evra: Former Manchester United footballer sentenced for abandoning wife and two children

French footballer Patrice Evra, who had stints as captain of both Manchester United and the French national team, has this week been found guilty by the Nanterre criminal court of abandoning his family from May 2021 to September 2023, to the detriment of his wife. A lawyer for his wife, Sandra Evra, claims that the 43-year-old owes her nearly a million euros - €969 thousand (£833 thousand) - in unpaid alimony.

According to Le Parisien, Evra was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment suspended for two years, which means he will likely not serve any time behind bars. He has also been ordered to pay his wife €4,000 for moral damages and €2,000 in court costs - a total of about £5,100. The former footballer’s legal team immediately appealed the sentence.

Nathalie Dubois, Sandra’s lawyer, told the French media that the pair had met when they were 15, and Sandra had “followed him all over the world to support his football career”. The Sun reports that Mrs Evra claims she was blindsided by her husband, who she says went to London on a two-week work trip after a family holiday in 2020.

The pair have reportedly never spoken since, and she alleges she got a call from her lawyer saying he wanted a divorce after she saw photos of him with another woman in the media. He is now reportedly living in Dubai with model Margaux Alexandra, with whom he also has two children.

“I hope that, thanks to this decision, Patrice Evra will finally understand that he is not above the law and that we cannot abandon our wife and children overnight,” Ms Dubois added.

Evra;s lawyer Jérôme Boursican told Le Parisien that “the facts are disputed” by his client. Evra had appealed the sentence, as he had provided his wife with an apartment and a house “with a swimming pool” in southern of France, he continued, and lent her nearly two million euros for her daily life. “A sum that she refuses to return, the reason for this trial,” the lawyer claimed.