Months after surviving a near-fatal car crash, Michail Antonio is a free agent after West Ham confirmed the forward would not be signing a new contract with the club.
Antonio, whose deal expired at the end of last season, has not played a competitive game for West Ham since the accident in December last year — but has since represented Jamaica on the international stage.
“Everyone at West Ham United would like to sincerely thank Michail for his outstanding, dedicated service in a claret and blue shirt over the last 10 years,” West Ham said in a statement.
The Premier League club also said it was in discussions with the 35-year-old Antonio over a future role in an “alternative capacity.”
Antonio needed surgery on a lower limb fracture after he crashed his Ferrari into a tree on a wet and windy day outside London on Dec. 7.
West Ham's then manager Julen Lopetegui called the outcome of the crash a “miracle.”
In an interview with the BBC in March, Antonio said he was left with a “completely shattered” leg and a realization of “how close I was to dying.”
He said he broke his femur bone in four places and required an operation where surgeons “put a pole in my thigh with four bolts.”
Antonio said he was 100% certain he would play again and fulfilled that ambition when coming on as an 85th-minute substitute in Jamaica's Gold Cup match against Guatemala in June.
He made further substitute appearances against Guadeloupe and Panama.
He scored twice for West Ham's Under-21 development team in a game against Boreham Wood, but that has not led to a contract extension at the club he has played for since joining from Nottingham Forest in 2015.
“Michail will always be a much-loved and respected member of the West Ham United family. As has been the case since December, the Club will continue to support and assist him in his ongoing rehabilitation, offering him access to training, facilities and medical care if needed,” West Ham said.
James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - West Ham's Michail Antonio runs into position during their English Premier League soccer match against Tottenham Hotspur, at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, Saturday, Oct 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Dave Shopland, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wildlife crews are no longer actively searching for two juvenile gray wolves who were part of a pack that killed dozens of cows and calves last summer in Northern California’s Sierra Valley, an official said Tuesday.
The two wolves were members of the Beyem Seyo pack that in 2025 killed or injured at least 92 calves and cows in a seven-month period, according to a report released last week by two researchers with the University of California, Davis.
Wolves in the state are protected under California law and the federal Endangered Species Act. Under former President Joe Biden, officials said they planned a first-ever national recovery plan for wolves, but President Donald Trump’s administration ended that initiative in November.
In October, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it had euthanized four gray wolves — three adults and a juvenile — from the Beyem Seyo pack after “an unprecedented level of livestock attacks across the Sierra Valley” by a single wolf pack since the canids returned to the state. It also said it planned to capture and relocate the remaining two wolves to wildlife facilities to prevent their behavior from spreading to other wolves in California.
Gray wolves primarily prey on wild animals like deer and elk, not livestock, but the pack became used to killing cows and calves, the department said.
“These wolves had become habituated to preying on cattle, a feeding pattern that persisted and was being taught to their offspring which would leave to form their own packs and could teach them the same cattle-preying behavior,” the department said at the time.
But following weeks of searching for the remaining two wolves, officials have “reduced efforts to capture” them, Katie Talbot, CDFW Deputy Director of Public Affairs, said in a statement.
“Despite best efforts from CDFW’s expert wolf biologists and law enforcement officers, we have not been able to find or get close enough to these young wolves to safely capture them,” Talbot said.
“We remain hopeful our continued remote monitoring will allow for sightings that will lead to safe capture of these juveniles," she added.
Talbot said that CDFW crews will be working this week on capturing wolves and collaring them throughout the state, including in the Sierra Valley.
Wildlife officials tried for months to prevent the pack from attacking farm animals by using drones, nonlethal bean bags, installing flags or rope to deter them and having officers in the field 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but their efforts failed.
“The efforts that the (CDFW) made were tremendous and heroic but it was too late.” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.
She said that cattle ranchers in the area should have been taking proactive prevention measures for years, including increased human presence around the cattle, keeping the livestock bunched up instead of letting them loose on large grazing pastures, and calving at the same time of year that deer and elk are birthing so wolves have a source of wild prey.
“Ranchers in California have been on notice that wolves were coming since late December 2011, when we got our first wolf. They have been on notice they would establish packs since 2015,” when the first pack was confirmed in Siskiyou County, Weiss said.
Gray wolves were eradicated in California early in the last century because of their perceived threat to livestock, with the last known native wolf killed in 1924 in Lassen County. Since their reintroduction in Idaho and at Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, they’ve proliferated throughout the West. The recovering population has meant increasing conflict with ranchers.
“It was a horrible summer here for everybody and the emotional strain was probably worse than the financial strain for most people. They did the right thing. We couldn’t go on living the way we were living,” said Rick Roberti, a cattle rancher in Plumas County and president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, who lost several animals.
Economist Tina Saitone and researcher Tracy Schohr said in UC Davis’ quarterly agricultural economics update released Friday that the Beyem Seyo pack killed more livestock than the entire wolf population of Montana killed in 2024 and the killings of farm animals by the wolves in Wyoming in 2023.
In Montana, the state’s 1,100 wolves killed 54 domestic animals in 2024, and Wyoming’s 352 wolves killed 49 livestock in 2023, the scientists said.
In California, about 70 gray wolves were responsible for 175 livestock kills between January and October of last year, with the Beyem Seyo pack responsible for half of the killings, according to CDFW data.
Roberti said the attacks on livestock in Plumas and Sierra counties left many ranchers angry. He said he would like to see certain areas in the state declared “special zones” where people are allowed to hunt wolves that attack livestock.
“We’re pretty much in unison about thinking that it would help if we started taking out the ones that are just killing cattle and are too habituated to man or they’re not afraid of us,” he said.
The predators are a long way from recovery, Weiss said, adding that killing them is not a long-term solution.
“The scientific literature is pretty conclusory that killing wolves to resolve conflicts with livestock is not a solution. It can actually be counterproductive. It can result in there being more conflicts with livestock," she said.
FILE - This remote camera image provided by the U.S. Forest Service shows a female gray wolf and two of the three pups born in 2017 in the wilds of Lassen National Forest in northern California on June 29, 2017. (U.S. Forest Service via AP, File)
