Was this gay footballer account fake or has he just been advised to not come public ? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-49093329
Personally I’ve come to trust almost nothing that I see on Twitter, especially when it could be viewed as someone just trying to get attention. The ‘I’ll reveal it on X day’ aspect seems a little weird and contrived. Hopefully soon we can have out gay footballers doing their thing on the football pitch and being treated like the normal people that they are. The first person to make that plunge though is going to have to deal with a lot of unpleasant scrutiny on their private life. I certainly don’t blame anyone in that position for not coming out, I know I wouldn’t.
Tend to agree. As Filbert says above, the whole ‘press conference’ and ‘date of unveiling’ angle just seemed odd. Has the hallmarks of a troll taking it as far as they could until the day came around and then just disappearing. On a broader scale, it there are players who know each other to be gay, I wonder if several or even a few ‘coming out’ together would lessen the fallout that they fear. I’m not quite sure that the scrutiny would be that bad. Undoubtedly, you would get some moronic fans at games and the usual social media trolls - but I think the football community would be far more supportive than many think.
He's not really gay. I was kidding. Yeah I think it's all a hoax. If someone was going to come out, I'd imagine this is the last way they would choose to do it, by making it into a really big deal. Not that I'd know though. I mean I'm not gay. Really, I'm not.
I doubt the response from most UK fans would be more than a shrug nowadays. I suspect the major problem would come from homophobes at club level and fans in less tolerant states (e.g. Russia). Seeing racist chants from 20 to 30 years ago still in full vogue elsewhere doesn't give me warm fuzzies about the prospects of gay footballers in those countries. Unfortunately, it's the backlash against those treating outed footballers badly that will ultimately reform football, so until some players start coming out and force football to deal with it (particularly the older generations of coaches, who likely hold the most homophobes) I think it might take a while to bridge the final part of the divide. It's somewhat ironic that women's football (e.g. the USWNT) has footballers who are already out.
