Pittsburgh Steelers tackle Alejandro Villanueva, a veteran who served three tours in Afghanistan, has spoken about the tensions that have grown between the military and the NFL following the anthem protests.

The NFL season has been dominated by the protest movement, during which players have knelt during the anthem to highlight social and racial injustice in the United States. Many have seen the protests as disrespectful to the military despite a number of players and veterans saying their actions are not a criticism of soldiers.

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“There’s tension between the veteran community and the NFL. You go to VFWs, and they won’t show NFL games,” Villanueva told ESPN. “[Veterans] don’t know if it’s, ‘Do we have to live in a utopian, perfect country for you to stand up for the national anthem?’ It’s a very tough concept for a lot of veterans to understand. I go back and forth because I’m in the middle of this whole thing. I’m a football player, but obviously the flag is the most important thing to me while I’m in this country.

Villanueva comes from a military family – his father was a Spanish naval officer – and he was an army ranger before joining the NFL in 2014. Villanueva was awarded a bronze star after rescuing wounded soldiers under enemy fire. “At the end of the day, people love football. It’s a reality,” said Villanueva. “We shouldn’t deprive ourselves of this great sport because of the unfortunate things that are surrounding things happening off the field.”

On Wednesday, the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, said the protests risked putting fans off the game. “[I want to] get beyond what we call protest to progress, get to the point where we can make that positive change, because people come to our stadiums to be entertained, have fun, not be protested to,” he said at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead Summit.

Villanueva received attention earlier in the season when he was the only Steeler to emerge from the tunnel for the national anthem before a game. His team-mates had chosen to stay in the tunnel after Donald Trump said if a player protested he should be called a “son of a bitch”. Villanueva later said he was not snubbing his team-mates and the situation had instead been caught in front of someone carrying a flag on to the field. “Unfortunately, I threw [my team-mates] under the bus, unintentionally,” Villanueva said at the time. “I made Coach Tomlin look bad, and that is my fault and my fault only. I made my team-mates look bad, and that is my fault.”

Villanueva is planning to commemorate this weekend’s Veterans Day by presenting each of his team-mates with a helmet decal representing an army division to wear during their game against the Indianapolis Colts. “It’s just a small-unit patch that really doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but the history behind it means the whole world to a lot of veterans,” Villanueva said. “They died for that patch. When you watch the Steelers on Sunday and you see the flash of the 10th round division and the 7th round division … you’re calling out specific units.”

The protests are starting to have an effect at the highest levels of the NFL. On Wednesday reports emerged that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, one of the most powerful men in football, will sue if a contract extension for Goodell is approved by the league’s compensation committee. Jones is understood to be unhappy with Goodell’s handling of the protests as well as the commissioner’s role in the suspension of Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott over allegations of domestic abuse.