The French media outlet L’Équipe has apologised to the Belgian footballer Jérémy Doku after he was criticised by one of its pundits for saying he would duck out of the World Cup to be present at the birth of his first child.

News of the apology came as the Belgian football federation said Doku had made it back to London in time to be with his wife Shireen, who gave birth to a boy called Praise ⁠on Monday.

“Jeremy received news before yesterday’s match that the birth was imminent,” the team ⁠doctor, Brahim Hacene, said in a statement. “Everything went perfectly, and the mother, father, and baby are all doing wonderfully. Jérémy will rejoin the squad [on Tuesday] evening in Seattle.”

Last week Doku had told reporters that Shireen was due to give birth in the second week of July and, should Belgium still be in the tournament by then, he was hoping to go home for the birth. “It depends on when it happens, but it’s my first child, so I ‌would ⁠definitely want to be there,” said Doku, Belgium’s 24-year-old winger, who plays for Manchester City. “If you ask me what I want, my answer is that nobody wants to miss the birth of their first child … I know the federation supports its players and understands their situations. We’ll see what we can do.”

His comments drew short shrift from France Pierron, a presenter with L’Équipe, who on Friday cited the “hundreds of footballers who would kill” to be playing in Doku’s place at the World Cup. “You’re living out a childhood dream, yet you’re going to walk away ‌from it all to attend the birth of your child – a disgusting moment, if you’ll pardon the expression, where the dad is completely useless,” she said. “He just holds your hand and takes a photo.”

Her view echoed the criticisms already made last week, when one of Doku’s former youth coaches told Belgian media that the player had already made his choice by turning up at the World Cup. “It may sound harsh, but if you’ve chosen to be there, you’ve chosen to play,” Peter Janssens told the news site VRT. ”The baby will still be there afterwards.”

The former Belgium international Gert Verheyen made light of the decision, asking what Doku would do while his wife was giving birth. “The only thing you can say is: ‘You’re doing great, keep going,’” he said. It wasn’t long, however, before it was Pierron being criticised, amid a global conversation on the intersection of sport and modern-day fatherhood. As her remarks went viral, voices from across the world of football and beyond lined up behind Doku.

“Shame on you,” the content creator Caroline Salame, who played for Canada at the Under-17 World Cup in New Zealand, told the TV presenter on social media. “As someone who has played in a World Cup and who has also given birth, let me tell you this: the hardest thing I have ever done in this lifetime – and the thing that I am most proud of – is bringing my baby earthside,” she said. “And I do not know how I would have done that without my husband beside me. Birth can be extremely complicated; anything can happen.”

Pierron’s comments were also challenged by a fellow commentator on L’Équipe. The retired boxer Brahim Asloum, who won light-flyweight gold for France at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, immediately took umbrage with Pierron’s claims, describing the birth of a child as a singular, once in a lifetime moment. “A baby is your entire life. A World Cup is over when it is over,” he said.

As a furore mounted online, Pierron appeared on social media to apologise. “These remarks are solely my own and in no way reflect a collective position. I understand that they may have shocked, offended or hurt some of you, and I am sorry for that. My intention was never to minimise the place or role of fathers with their partners and children,” she wrote.

In a statement published late on Sunday, L’Équipe distanced itself from the comments made by Pierron, saying they had “shocked” many of its viewers. “L’Équipe distances itself with these remarks, which are far removed from [its] values and apologises to the footballer concerned and more broadly to its audience,” it said. The TV channel of the French sports newspaper was reported by AFP to have said on Monday that Pierron would remain off-air until the end of the current season of her show on 3 July.

Critics remained unimpressed. “It seems ridiculous to me that we still have these big outrages, when men talk about wanting to do the most basic human thing imaginable, which is to be present when their baby is born,” said Jeremy Davies of the Fatherhood Institute in the UK.

He described Doku as setting a “refreshing” example by demonstrating that one can be more than just a top-ranked footballer. “To me, it’s like we haven’t moved on from the sort of gladiators in the Colosseum. You know, these kinds of masculine heroes who are supposed to have no softness to them, no family commitments or anything like that,” he said. “You can be a soft and loving man and hard as nails on the pitch, if you like.”

He applauded the footballer for having the “perspective” to see the broader picture. “In the end, fine – football is important, everybody loves football, everybody gets terribly excited. It’s just a job, on some level, too,” he said. “This footballer gets it, and it seems to me that’s a healthy attitude in life. And if more of us had it, maybe the world would be a better place, you know?”