No room for gays in ‘macho’ football

By Mike Owuor

Since he moved from Tottenham Hotspur to the London ‘enemy club’ of Arsenal in 2001, footballer Sol Campbell, currently at Portsmouth, has always had a hostile reception from Spurs fans who consider him a ‘Judas’. This is not surprising, considering the rivalry and given that Spurs fans have chants like "Stand up if you hate Arsenal".

But last October the hostility appeared to go overboard with chants based on rumours that Sol is gay. Despite the defender having had "a string of girlfriends", according to dailystar.co.uk, and besides repeatedly denying the rumours, bitter fans seem to enjoy the homophobic taunts.

One of the chants quoted on the Daily Star website even has claims that the player is HIV-positive: "Sol, Sol, wherever you may be/You’re on the verge of lunacy/And we don’t give a f*** if you’re hanging from a tree/ You Judas c*** with HIV."

The fans may have had fun in the insults, but the police did not see the funny side. After watching CCTV footage, 11 people, including a 13-year-old, were last week charged with "indecent chanting". Others are being sought. This is not the first time Sol’s gay rumours have reached the courts. A June 2005 report in guardian.co.uk says his brother, John Campbell, was jailed for attacking a campus classmate for making the allegations.

The incident also revived a debate on why gay professional footballers are reluctant to admit their sexual orientation. It seems that while other celebrities can openly declare they are gay without too much of a backlash, professional football is still conservative even in countries that are generally tolerant to homosexuals.

An intriguing story involves Justin Fashanu who, according to his biography in wikipedia.com, played for various English football teams between 1978 and 1997. In 1981 he was signed by Nottingham Forest to become "Britain’s first £1 million black player". But in 1990 the footballer, with Nigerian roots, shocked everyone when The Sun, a British tabloid, paid him for an exclusive story that ran under the headline, ‘£1m football star: I AM GAY’. He later appeared on the cover of Gay Times. With that admission, he seemed to have put an end to his career.

Closeted lives

The family appeared to disown him, with his brother John Fashanu (who was himself a footballer) declaring in The voice that his brother was an outcast. Wikipedia reports that Justin’s colleagues criticised him, with some saying homosexuals had no place in team sports. He later claimed he found it difficult to land a permanent contract from clubs after the revelation. Justin committed suicide in 1998 in the middle of allegations of sexually assaulting a teenager.

Graeme Le Saux, a former England and Chelsea player, also had to endure taunts by fans that he was gay, although he denied the claims. Quoting extracts of the footballer’s biography, timesonline.co.uk (‘How gay slurs almost wrecked my career’, September 10, 2007) gives details of his frustrations at enduring insults from fans and teammates alike.

A current Chelsea player, Ashley Cole, has also had to face tittle-tattle on his sexual preference, despite being married to a pop star. In 2006 he sued the News of the World and The Sun for running stories alleging he was involved in a "gay sex orgy". The newspapers paid damages and apologised.

Well, one would expect that unlike Kenya where homosexuality is generally not tolerated, football fans in the UK would not mind cheering an openly gay player. Apparently that is not the case. In an article on the BBC website (‘Why are there no openly gay footballers?’ November 2005), Djibril Cisse, then a Liverpool player, vows tongue-in-cheek never to kiss a team-mate in goal-scoring celebrations "for fear of being thought of as gay". Some gay players go to great lengths to publicly appear heterosexual.

Perhaps it is the desire to maintain a macho image that makes it hard for football clubs and their fans to tolerate gay colleagues.