Suzanne Harrington: What's the big deal about being a gay footballer?
Suzanne Harrington
Even if you’re into football, you probably never heard of Josh Cavallo unless you support Adelaide, in which case you’ll know he’s their 21-year-old midfielder and as the club’s rising star, has been showing great promise. (Thanks, Wikipedia – all I know about Australia is spiders).
Except we’ve all heard of him now. As well as promise, Cavallo has shown even greater courage, now that he’s the world’s only out professional footballer – we know this because he has been all over the media, talking about how leading a double life had been having “a huge influence on my mental health”.
Cavallo couldn’t fake being straight anymore, despite having long assumed that being his true self and playing professional football could never intersect. He received immediate support, from Gerard Pique to Gary Linekar, Marcus Rashford to Robin van Persie. Clubs from Liverpool and Arsenal to Atletico Bilbao and Juventus have all sent him the big thumbs up. As you’d bloody expect, right?
You’d wonder what the big deal is, being a gay footballer in 2021. We have gay everything else in sport – rugby players, boxers, hurlers, tennis players, divers – haven’t we? Or, Gareth Thomas, Nigel Owens, Tom Daley and Donal Og Cusack aside, are they mostly gay women?
Martina and Billie Jean blazed a trail on the tennis court for women like Nicola Adams and Kellie Harrington in the boxing ring – but remember what happened to the only top league footballer to come out before Josh Cavallo?
Justin Fashanu outed himself in a tabloid in October 1990, afraid the tabloid was going to do it anyway. Instead of support, his manager, Brian Clough, called him “a bloody poof”, and he was denounced by his brother, the footballer John Fashanu, and his wider community. His career nosedived. He died by suicide in 1998, and there have been no openly gay footballers since.
In terms of football maths, this lack of on-pitch gayness doesn’t add up. In the UK, the Premier League alone has 517 players (plus the Championship and two lesser leagues); add France’s two Ligues, Spain’s two Ligas, Germany’s two Bundesliga, and Italy’s Series A and B, and statistically, that’s quite a few young guys nailed inside the macho closet of top-flight football. Afraid to come out. Unwilling to come out. Worried about what will happen if they come out. Thinking it’s safer not to come out.
Even if you support a club based in one of the gayest towns in Europe – like Brighton & Hove Albion, with their rainbow merch and inclusive policies – there are no players queering the pitch. Not outwardly anyway. Professional football remains the last bastion of mainstream homophobia – so will the courageous actions of some 21 year old on the other side of the world ripple through, and inspire other young players to step out? You’d hope so.
Nobody should have to hide who they are, especially when they’re on-pitch heroes to so many. Get out, be proud. And ban the homophobes if they get too noisy. It’s 2021, for God's sake.
