I think you're doing footballers a bit of a disservice there. How many people in society would baulk at the idea of working with for example a muslim, a German, or even a black man? Not many but certainly a lot more than would in football that's for sure. The fans would be the real problem, but players as a rule are infinitely more enlightened than the average fan. They would find it hard to get work if they were openly hostile towards other nationalities, races or religions for example, and I don't think, a bit of brief adjustment notwithstanding, sexuality would be any different. Don't just take my word for it, our very own Jack Cork tweeted not so long ago: "Just watching bbc3 [documentary on gay footballers] now. Don't think it would be an issue with the players at our club if someone came out. Interesting programme."
For sure, don't get me wrong, there will be footballers who accept it; but doesn't take too many in a club to not accept it for it to be a problem similar to the picture I painted (a worst case scenario and a vision of the sort of things that might be going through a gay footballer's mind when considering coming out, remember, rather than what I am saying will happen). Jack Cork is from a younger generation, and thus likely more tolerant - possibly had gay friends at school, or perhaps living in London when with Chelsea was exposed to a more open and diverse society. I am almost certain, though, that the population of footballers (we're talking right the way down through the leagues here, too) mirrors to an extent the larger population - influenced by their upbringing, local geography etc. and a lot of footballers probably come from small-minded towns where modern attitudes are slower to trickle down. Being more worldy human beings now, you would hope they change their views; but just one look at someone like John Terry might suggest it's not always going to happen. If I was a young gay player in a Chelsea squad with JT as the alpha-male in the dressing room, I would certainly think twice about coming out for fear of any sort of judgement (not of course saying JT would have a probelm with it, just saying I'd think twice). The race issue has got to where it is today as a result of years of work in football, so hard to compare it with attitudes to gay players - which has been an issue completely unaddressed in football, purely because there is no financial interest in addressing it - isn't really possible. Whereas cutting out black players from a league would deprive it of a large proportion of the world's best players, and the English league of course would not have got anywhere by having them excluded or having them drop out early due to fears of abuse, it is hard to find anyone fighting for the inclusion of more out gay players to help us take our league on to the next level! And as you can hide being gay, as opposed to being black, is easily swept under the carpet and ignored, bar the occasional lip service. Besides, going back to JT, as well as Suarez, even the race issue is apparently not sorted out amongst players as yet. And of course, I find it difficult to refer to football players collectively as 'enlightened', having witnessed the Twitter antics of many of them; Chet Evans' behaviour; and the rest.
Some inflammatory/controversial comments getting circulated on Twitter, they come from Artur Petroysan (SportBox Russian Editor): "Hearing that Neuer, Kroos, Lahm and Mario Gomez are gay and some of their Bayern teammates find it hard to deal with them because of that." "And now it seems there's no chance for any of them to ever play for #Zenit. Fernando Ricksen and Szabolcs Huszti didn't last long there." "Could also be the reason why Fergie lost interest in Neuer after being so much keen on signing him. #MUFC"
To be honest, that does sound like bullshit; though oddly enough I was having a conversation with a German girl during the world cup a couple of years ago, who told me that Manuel Neuer was gay and said that although it wasn't official everyone in Germany knew it! I was sort of sceptical at the time but maybe she was right! I suspect Ferguson might be on the phone to his lawyers if his last comment gets any sort of attention...
Sounds like **** to me. Lahm's married and either way he, Kroos and Gomez have been there long enough that if there was a problem, it'd be more apparent by now.
