Time For Football To Deal With Homophobia

At first glance the story that Ricky Martin has come out as homosexual may not seem to have any links with football. However, with further inspection, it points to a dark cloud still hanging over our beloved game. Ricky Martin is a Latino male, and that carries a stereotype; macho male. A strong type as far removed from homosexuality as possible, as if being gay was something chosen by whimsical arty types.

We can add Latino male to rugby league and rugby union players as those who are gay, openly and proudly gay. Add those bastions of manliness to basketball, Irish hurling and the armed forces, and little by little the farcical, but long held belief that homosexuality is a polar opposite of manliness is being destroyed.

Sadly football remains a sport with no openly gay sports stars. That’s not to say there are no gay footballers. With an estimated 5% of the British population homosexual, and a very rough estimate of 2500 professionals in the English game, for there to be no homosexuals at all would be an extraordinary anomaly.

If that’s not the case, and there are gay footballers, they why haven’t they come out? The benefits to young people wrestling with their sexuality, whilst being involved in the national sport, would be massive, life changing in fact. Yet this is still to happen, and it’s hardly surprising.

Whilst the belief held has long been that crowds would barrack the first player to come out, does the buck stop there? Homophobic abuse does exist in football grounds, just as it exists in the streets, but if the FA is serious in its intent to remove homophobia, then this kind of abuse must result in expulsion, bans for fans, and fines for clubs.

Only when this started to happen for racism was there a difference on the terraces. It never did in Spain, and that’s why the removal of the scourge has never been taken seriously in grounds, with racist chanting still prevalent across an otherwise liberal and intelligent nation.  

Yet footballers themselves have their own parts to play. The FA recently launched an ad campaign condemning homophobia. An excellent idea, yet it had to be scrapped when no footballers would back it. Letters were sent to every club asking players to condemn homophobia, yet nobody would. Not a single man would stand up for their fellow professionals. Should the letter have asked them to condemn racism the waiting list would rightly be lengthy, as it was for the ‘Kick it out’ campaign.

With such judgement waiting it’s hardly surprising that players don’t feel they can come out. One needs only to look at the Robbie Fowler and Graeme Le Saux incident of years gone by. Fowler made homophobic taunts to Le Saux, and yet Le Saux was vilified for ‘over reacting.’ If the abuse was racial in its content would it be this way? No, and rightly no.

Last year Rio Ferdinand was heard on radio using the word ‘faggot.’ No loss of sponsors, nothing close to the treatment that Ron Atkinson received when he used the word ‘nigger.’

The last time a man in England did come out, Justin Fashanu, he was dead soon after. He hanged himself after endless hostility from fans and players alike. If involuntary manslaughter is defined as ‘commiting an unlawful act, or dangerous act, that results in death’ then football should have had its day in court long ago.

The world is changing, with homophobia being driven out of every dark alley that it hides in. When the world looks at gay rights in 50 years, the same way we do now at civil rights, football is in real danger of being seen as having done nothing; as being the last safe house for intolerance and hatred. It will take the effort of everybody involved in the beautiful game to see that that doesn’t happen.