Kick It Out - Gays In Football

[Rob McCow]

From the Independent:

The acceptance of Gareth Thomas coming out as rugby's first openly gay professional has shamed football, where anti-gay prejudice remains rife, an adviser to four players who have dared not follow Thomas's route said yesterday.

A year on from the Football Association's controversial decision to pull an anti-homophobic viral campaign, the Kick it Out organisation – which spearheaded that work – will attempt to highlight the issue once again this evening by hosting a forum on the issue, near Manchester, at which the former England international, Earl Barrett will be among a panel of guests.

Max Clifford, Britain's leading PR adviser, who has told "three or four" gay footballers in the past decade that coming out would kill their careers, said rugby's response to Thomas – who used to play union for Wales and Cardiff Blues but now is with the Super League side Crusaders – had shown "how it should be" and "helped only to pinpoint the problems in football." There is "a different culture in the two sports," Clifford said. He also offered his services yesterday to launch a campaign which might help drive homophobia out of the game.

Since The Independent revealed last February that high-profile Premier League footballers had been unwilling to appear in an FA anti-homophobia video for fear of ridicule – "Everybody assumes footballers are full of confidence, but it is not easy on issues like this," PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor told this newspaper – German football has shown the way, with players speaking out. The Bayern Munich striker Mario Gomez broke ranks with the German football federation, who have warned that coming out could destroy a player's career, when he told a German magazine that players being honest about their sexuality would improve their performance.

"They would play as if they had been liberated," Gomez said. "Being gay should no longer be a taboo topic. We've got a gay vice-chancellor [Guido Westerwelle]; the Berlin mayor [Klaus Wowereit] is gay. So professional footballers should own up to their preference." Schalke goalkeeper Manuel Neuer also said two weeks ago that: "Players who are gay should say so and take a load off their minds. The fans will get over it. What is important to them, is the performances on the pitch of the player, not his sexual preferences."

But the silence has remained deafening within the British game, the one Premier League player who has addressed the issue in the past year being Chelsea's Florent Malouda. In a little-noticed interview published on his club's website, the Frenchman said that football was "now beginning to fight another long-standing enemy in homophobia. Before people couldn't even speak about that – like they were rejecting it and saying it is not existing – but you have to accept people as they are."

The FA, which said its reason for postponing the launch of the anti-homophobic video was the need for a review of its entire anti-homophobic policy, is now putting it to work. The FA accepts that there is no magic bullet to dispel homophobia but it believes the viral film has prompted an awareness of the prejudice, which did not even exist before. It has used the viral film as part of its stewards' training programme and is also ensuring the Crown Prosecution Service is aware of it, to ensure homophobia brings banning orders. The FA has also reformed its homophobia advisory group, to include those who can better shape the six-point strategy which is an integral part of its work.

But many campaigners feel that bolder action is needed and some high-profile crusaders are needed for this cause. Kick it Out continues to work on the issue. This evening's free event at Sale's Waterside Arts Centre, which starts at 7pm, is part of a month's series of events celebrating gay and lesbian participation in sport.

Barrett, the former Aston Villa defender, said: "Narrow-mindedness still exists on the terraces, in the boardroom and in the studio – as we've seen recently. We need to dig deeper to examine why football remains unwelcoming to this community." Clifford said: "It's very sad that in my area of PR we deal with everything from celebrities to companies, actors to sports people and still the only field in which we experience this problem is football."

Apart from the constant association of the word 'Gay' with 'Rubbish', the attitude in football towards homosexuality seems to be one of complete silence. The total lack of any openly gay footballers is shocking to me; there's an endemic attitude that football is a 'Real Man's' game played only by 'Real Men'.

Are the majority of football fans really homophobic, lager swilling louts who like nothing better than bashing a few queers after the match? I think football fandom would be a lot more receptive than the managers and agents seem to think.

More info here - http://www.kickitout.org/1048.php

What do the peeps who know more about football think about this subject?

[Lissa]

The problem with football fans is that they are very tribal and narrow-sighted. A famous story has a group of fans shouting abuse at the opposition's black players and calling them every name under the sun. When it was pointed out that their own team had equally black players the response was "Yeah, but they're ours". It never occurs to them that their own players can hear the same shouts as the opposition. When United fans shout "You scouse bastard" at Liverpool players I wonder what Wayne Rooney thinks of it.

The reaction to gay players would probably be the same - their own fans would support them, the opposition fans would abuse them. Slowly but surely those guilty of abuse would be banned - as they have been for racial abuse - and fans would realise you can't behave that way in a football ground. The problem is that black players couldn't hide that they were black and just had to face it head on and hopefully ride the storm. Now there isn't a racial problem in the English game though there is abroad (how ironic that anti-discrimination FIFA awards consecutive World Cups to a racist country like Russia and a homophobic country like Qatar) which shows that the problem can be tackled.

Gay players can hide the fact that they are gay so the abuse is more speculative or generic. It's much harder to prosecute someone for calling an apparently straight man queer than it is to prosecute someone for calling a gay man queer.

So it's not going to change until a brave group of players come out of the closet and the police and stewards ensure that those who want to hurl abuse at them are ejected, banned and even prosecuted for doing so. It isn't that football fans are homophobic per se - just that they hate the opposition so much that they do and say things they wouldn't say to that person's face.

[Si Hunt]

Physically being in a football ground is unlike any other place on Earth, both because of its spectacle and because you are penned in with thousands of mostly-men and allowed to shout. There's no where else like that. Because of that it does bring out a sort of tribal instinct. It's almost unregulated, bar the odd steward so it's really every man for himself. In many ways shouting encouragement for your team, which is very close to shouting abuse at the other team, is the very point.

So at the moment I can't imagine any kind of tolerance; it's not the environment for understanding or common sense; watching a football match is not condusive to thinking about things sensitively. It's not personal - everyone gets it, whether you are black, gay, have a fashion model wife or simply very short or tall.

So maybe the answer is for these gay players to all come out en masse and grin and bear it. When the abuse comes, it will just be because the crowds have another "difference" to bay at, and if enough of them come out then arguably the crowds won't be able to taunt if half the pitch is, figuratively if not actually, playing for the other side.

Si.

[Rob McCow]

But they're hurling abuse at the players on the other team anyway. There are torrents of it coming from the opposing team's stands every time they play.

Yes, being singled out for abuse is awful, but when there's already tens of thousands of people chanting about what a w*nker you are how much harder is it for them to accept more personal abuse? It'd be impossible for the authorities to stop fans making abusive comments on the football field altogether.

I just don't think that the fear of fans shouting negative comments is sufficient cause for the footballers to remain closeted.

[Antony Cox]

Gay players can hide the fact that they are gay

I bet it's tough in the showers after the game, though...

Thsi is a very delicate situation. I have no interest in football, and know little about it, but from what I see I can't imagine most fans accepting players who come out in the spirit in which it'd be intended.

It's a laudible decision to make, but I can't help feeling that a lot of players would suffer terribly until things died down a bit; it would probably be OK in years to come.

[Si Hunt]

I agree with Steve. In many ways it's one of the few places where it doesn't matter, because as Steve says, everyone is shouting what they like anyway. There's a logic that suggests that the football ground has a place in venting anger in the frustrated working classes; if you've spent 90 minutes shouting your lungs out and hurling explitives at 11 blokes trotting about a football field, you're far less likely to take your frustration out on a lamp-post or another person.

On the other hand, perhaps one day it will be possible for there to be gay players who arn't taunted, but that day won't come until the crowds are used to it - so staying closetted is just postponing the inevitable. You can't instruct a crowd of thousands on what they can and can't shout, so it would be better if the gay players just got on with it and got it out the way and then everyone would get bored and move onto something else.

Si.

[SiHart]

It may not be football, but another sportsman has decided to come out- http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/9409211.stm

Si xx

[Stuart Wallis]

In my experience, except for the ones who come in during the close season for football and have nowhere else to go for an afternoon's drinking and sport, cricket audiences tend to be rather more tolerant; or at least if they're English, keep their barracking for the Aussies. I wish Steve Davies well, and Gareth Thomas.

[Captain Tancredi]

I suppose keeping wicket is an ideal position if you're a gay cricketer- at least he'll have had a fairly good idea which way he swung early on given that you spend half the match with your face a foot or two from another man's bottom!

What cricket and both codes of rugby have in common that football doesn't have, though, is the culture of everybody mixing together in the clubhouse afterwards- what happens on the pitch stays on the pitch, and after the end of the game you socialise with your opposite numbers over several frothing pints. Football is far too tribal for that, and as I've pointed out elsewhere before, a professional footballer aged 18 will have come through a youth system where it's almost certainly commonplace to call somebody a nancy boy or similar for shying away from a tackle. I think it's in the academies and youth teams that football needs to start putting its house in order, because I suspect that the culture drives a lot of gay teenagers away from sport.

[Larry]

The problem with football fans is that they are very tribal and narrow-sighted..

very true the ex-Chelsea, player Grahan Le Soux, was often taunted for being gay, - the reason for that was because he enjoyed things like reading a book and listening to classical music. Sadly that is the kind of neanderthal mentality your up against .
t
Those football fans on this forum will know all about Justin Fashanu, he was the first well known footballer in this country to openly admitt to being gay. Sadly Justin., was then shunned by the game and no one wanted to have anything to do with him he would later be accused of sexual assault which eventually saw him take his own life.


Football, breads a lot of hate and although there are almost certainly numerous gay footballers the over riding fear of homophobic attack and being shunned by your team mates is IMO, the reason why no player will admitt to being gay while they are still playing the game.

[Captain Tancredi]

I rather like Graeme Swann's tweet on the subject:

Good on everyone showing support for Steve Davies. For those few opposed? maybe find a new rock to live under? #2011not1811

Important as the courage of individual sportsmen is, the public support of their teammates is just as vital.

[Antony Cox]

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...Soccer_Player/

Quite a dish, too!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Maybe there aren't any gay footballers. After all, there are many other qualities of humanity that you'll not find much evidence of in footballers