The Stigma of Being g*y in Football
A recent news item that surfaced in Germany has a lot of people worried. It was reported that Michael Ballack’s agent stated, that the current Germany team were g*y because they played with a very fluid style and not the aggressive style that the German teams were known for in the past. There is a huge stigma with being g*y in the world of football. Footballers are supposed to be ultra macho and masculine and being g*y is not acceptable at all. This has become a big problem with the sport because being g*y is slowly becoming more and more acceptable in other professions.
The injured German Captain Michael Ballack’s agent, Michael Becker, stated that he thought the current German team were a ‘bunch of g**s’. He reported this to a journalist because he thought they played too weakly during the World Cup, and they were not aggressive enough to reach the final. There are two interesting aspects to his statements, first we can clearly see how taboo it is to be g*y in football and the other is that he was sorely mistaken that the team playing with a fluid style or not playing aggressively enough meant that they were g*y. It is shocking that Becker seems not to really know what being g*y means. Contrary to popular belief, not all g*y men are effeminate and many straight men can be weak and non aggressive. Not all men are a bunch of aggressive brutes willing to kill each other at the drop of a hat. By this agent’s logic then, the entire Brazilian team should be g*y because they play with such fluidity that it looks like they are dancing with the ball on the field.
Interesting studies take place all the time in the world and one of these very interesting studies found out that about 15% of the adult population of the UK is either g*y or bisexual, so by doing the math that would mean that about 50 players in the Premier League were g*y or bisexual. If this study is to be believed, because it is not possible that every single player in the entire Premier League was straight, then that would mean that the concept of the macho, straight, hard footballer might be a thing of the past.
There needs to be some sort of a revolution in the world of football because people should be able to live whichever way they feel like as long as it does not affect their performance on the field. The stigma of being g*y and being part of a football team has to be challenged and changed. People should be accepted no matter what their sexual preference is. A lot of conservative football fans were up in arms when the metro sexual footballer was revealed; the good looking model type of footballer with perfect hair before and after every game. They slowly got used to that image, the Christiano Ronaldos and the David Beckhams, and maybe one day the ultra conservatives out there will be ok with g*y footballers as well.
A very sad case developed recently which saw an openly g*y referee in Turkey being banned from doing the job he loved to do by the Turkish football authority. The referee in the middle of this case, Halil Ibrahim Dincdag, has challenged the decision to fire him in a local court because he feels that the only reason he was let go was because he is g*y. It seems that he maintains that if he can do the job he is assigned to do, what difference does it make to the authorities if he is straight or g*y. Turkey is one of the only Muslim countries where being g*y is not illegal but it is still a very taboo thing for Turkish society. This case just shows us how deeply the fear of g*y players and officials is entrenched in people’s minds when it comes to football.
Hopefully one day will come when players and officials in football are judged only on the level of skills they have and how well they earn the huge sums of money paid to them. At the end of the day it only comes down to this fact. Everything else is a secondary element; what a footballer looks like, who he is dating or if he is g*y or straight should really not matter. Let’s see some openness and fairness in the world of football because it is about time it showed up.
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