Thomas Hitzlsperger felt able to come out last week, but only after his soccer career had ended. The memory of Justin Fashanu still shames the game
In the 1990s, when I was privileged to work with some very fine journalists at Scotland on Sunday, a few of us tried to make the sports section the most rock'n'roll and right-on in the business. The campaigns came thick and fast and would have done justice to Tribune: an end to discrimination against women in golf; promoting young Asians in football; promoting rugby union in state schools; opposing the state selling off playing fields all over Scotland.
One campaign though, sincerely conceived and long in preparation, simply foundered at the outset and left us wondering what more we could have done to make it a success. We sought to offer a platform to any gay men then playing football at a senior level in Scotland to declare their homosexuality. We thought that at least one would come forward, bolstered by the campaigning support of a national newspaper.
In the end we simply had to admit defeat. There were two anonymous calls to the desk, one cancelled meeting and a loose promise, which didn't materialise, from a player to speak off the record. Not a single football person wished even to discuss the aggressive homophobia in the game that prevented several gay footballers from being open about their sexuality. It was an unpleasant episode which left me and others feeling a little besmirched that we remained part of this dismal football pantomime.
We were reminded again last week how empty and squalid are the values of football in Britain when the esteemed German international footballer, Thomas Hitzlsperger, declared his homosexuality following his recent retirement from the professional game. That he felt he had to wait until the conclusion of his career to do this tells you all you need to know about some of the values of football in 2014.
But the timing of his declaration does not in any way diminish the courage of Hitzlsperger, a highly regarded player with Aston Villa, Everton and West Ham in making it at all. He is still a young man and evidently an intelligent and thoughtful one too, delivering his thoughts on television with dignity. He would be an asset in any television or radio studio where football is discussed . The BBC is seeking a replacement for Alan Hansen on Match of the Day. Dare they?
If you subscribe to the theory that around 10% of the population is gay then it is inconceivable that there aren't several hundred homosexual men playing senior football in Britain today. At this point I don't know what's more depressing: that they can't openly declare their sexuality during their careers or that I fully accept why it is virtually impossible for them so to do. There is scant evidence that if any of them were to do this they wouldn't be subject to vile and abusive chanting at every away ground they played at.
Indeed, there is little to suggest that they wouldn't encounter such abuse among supporters of their own team or that they would receive the moral support of their clubs and colleagues if they did so.
When was the last time you heard an influential football manager or chairman state unequivocally that openly gay footballers would be welcome in their dressing rooms? Have you ever heard of any mainstream sports media outlet actively campaign against homophobia in football in the same way as they might rail against racism? Only Observer Sport's splendid and iconic Said & Done column regularly draws attention to this wickedness.
Working in Edinburgh in 1993, many of us were entertained by the mini-drama that arrived in the city following the transfer of Justin Fashanu to Heart of Midlothian FC. Fashanu was once a very fine footballer who had excelled for Norwich City in the English First Division and seemed destined for a rewarding international career.
He was a bright, happy and handsome man with a gorgeous smile who had emerged from a Barnardo's home and possessed the pleasing habit of sticking the ball in the pokey on a regular basis. By the time he reached Hearts though, he was almost broken following years of abuse and loathing by the football community after he had declared his homosexuality a few years before.
At Nottingham Forest, where he should have enjoyed some of the best years of his career, Fashanu ran into Brian Clough, a man of a generation which was simply bewildered by homosexuality. Even so, Clough, a revered figure in British football, seems to have been proud of cruelly baiting his young charge on hearing of his reported visits to gay nightclubs. In his autobiography Clough recalls the following exchange with him:
"Where do you go if you want a loaf of bread?" I asked him.
"A baker's, I suppose."
"Where do you go if you want a leg of lamb?"
"A butcher's."
"So why do you keep going to that bloody poofs' club?"
Fashanu hanged himself just a few years later, having been disowned by his own brother and his fellow professionals and with an unproven charge of sexual assault haunting him in the US, where he had fled to try to revive his career in a more enlightened environment.
In some ways you can understand, if not justify, the medieval pack mentality of football fans, many of whom will have other challenges in their lives and whose instinct will always be to fear that which they consider to be different or unusual.
Not so football managers and club directors who, in the 21st century, might have been expected by now to have constructed an environment where gay people need not feel threatened and excluded at their work.
And how many gay football supporters are there in the UK who are not inclined to pay money at the gate just to endure 90 minutes of homophobic bile being directed at players, match officials and opposing fans?
Justin Fashanu died in 1998 at the age of 37, reviled and alone. His death bore witness to football's collective inhumanity towards gay people, yet few of us felt ashamed.
Sixteen years later, we find that little has changed in enlightened and compassionate Britain.
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