One of West Ham’s greatest ever strikers, Michail Antonio wants you to know what it really feels like to earn a living by playing professional football.

He has been around the block and done the hard yards, breaking through the tough way via grassroots non-league football rather than through an Academy – a testament to his resilience and commitment.

He wants you to know the truth of existing in a world where professional football and ‘real life’ collide:

What happens when life inevitably gets in the way and has a negative impact on performance?

What is it like to feel the full dehumanising force of his harshest online critics, and yet still be expected to perform as if he doesn’t have a care in the world?

How does it feel to experience verbal and racial abuse just for doing your job?

In this unmissable, In Conversation event, he will peel back the layers of this unique way of earning a living, charting the daily realities of what it means to be an elite athlete – the parts of the jobs that the fans don’t see of even consider.

He says: “Footballers are humans, not robots. We don’t live our lives on factory settings. We’re an ever-changing swirl of emotions. We have lows, we have highs. We feel joy, we feel pain. We feel loved, we feel hurt. We dance like maniacs. We curl up and cry alone in dark rooms. We are you and you are us. All that separates us the inch of whitewash we step across on a matchday.”