Burnley boss Sean Dyche opening door for gay footballers is so important
IF SEAN DYCHE was your manager, coming out as a gay Premier League footballer might be easier than at clubs with less enlightened leaders.
The Burnley boss this week brought attention to the taboo issue of the glaring lack of top-level, openly LGBT football stars, by saying that if someone were to come out in his changing room there would be “nothing in it at all”.
He told Alastair Campbell and his comic daughter Grace’s podcast Football, Feminism And Everything In Between: “I would just go, ‘Are you a really good footballer? Well, let’s crack on then’.”
I know there are numerous gay Premier League footballers choosing to stay in the closet right now – and it’s a forward-thinking manager like Sean who might give them the confidence to be themselves.
In this enlightened world of Pride and love is love and Sky’s rainbow laces campaign, the opportunities for the first player to come out while in the Premier League will be genuinely exciting.
If I were looking at the issue from a purely professional level, my advice to any gay footballer would be to embrace the opportunity to become the most famous sportsman in the country overnight.
Corporate sponsors would no longer cut and run with such an announcement, but rather try to sign you for endorsement deals. Every major magazine would want you on the cover.
Charities would want you involved. And you’d be lauded by royalty and politicians around the globe.
There would even be a chance this player could establish themselves as a great leader of the game and a brand to rival the likes of Rooney, Ronaldo and Beckham.
Call me Pollyanna-ish, but I have the faith that a gay footballer in the Premier League would be better than fine, perhaps even celebrated, and end up having a bigger career than if they chose to stay in the closet.
But it’s still not happening.
So why are footballers in the Premier League not coming out as gay? Quite rightly, clubs are nervous about heaping so much pressure on one player.
Could they really handle it, the bosses ask?
Yes, it’s a different time but the tragic echoes of the late Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay leading footballer, remain.
And, of course, the player himself might simply not want the extra attention and pressure such an admission would inevitably bring.
As Sean Dyche put it: “The next thing I’m more concerned about is not about homophobia, it’s about the drive for the next gay footballer.
“But think about it – the next gay footballer might not want to be that person that is, ‘Look, I am a gay footballer’. Imagine the noise of that.”
For some, I appreciate that noise might be an unbearable prospect.
And what about the noise in the stands? Homophobic chants have long been part of the dark side of football in the UK and it is sickening that it still goes on.
Maybe I’m naive here too, but when a gay player is personalised in the minds of these fans as one of their football heroes, I hope and pray the abuse for the most part would stop.
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How many old-school homophobes have you known who make that type of beautiful conversion to acceptance after discovering their own son or daughter is part of the LGBT community?
Every single manager in the Premier League should speak out in the coming months in the same way as Sean Dyche.
There’s no need to make a big deal about it. Just put on the record for all your gay players to hear publicly that the club would support and embrace them if they choose to speak publicly about who they are.
Because until then, the whole world can see that professional football in the UK remains in the Dark Ages when it comes to sexuality.
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