The Mirror have reported that a pair of Premier League footballers are set to come out of the closet in the near future, believing that the culture around football has changed to a point where they would be treated acceptably by fans and their fellow professionals.
One of the two players is said to be an England international and reports say that both have told their family and friends, and are being supported by both their clubs and the FA through the process.
A source for the newspaper said: “The stigma has completely gone, and the public are far more accepting. At this level of football, being gay is almost the final frontier.
“It has always been such a macho game and, unfortunately, perhaps more than in any other sport, there can be an aggressive mob mentality in the stands. But finally the tide is turning and more and more sports people are openly gay.”
The paper declined to name the pair, but claimed that they would become the Premier League’s first openly gay footballers before the start of next season.
They also claim that another ‘well-known’ player came out to his friends in 2011, but found his car vandalised with a homophobic word painted on it, making him reluctant to come out to the wider public.
The first openly gay footballer in English professional football was Norwich and Nottingham Forest striker Justin Fashanu, older brother of Wimbledon legend John, when he came out in 1990.
He was hounded by ‘malicious’ abuse from his fellow professionals and relentless abuse from fans wherever he played, and eventually committed suicide in 1998 aged 37 after being accused of sexual assault in a state of the USA where homosexual acts were still illegal, saying that he knew he wouldn’t get a fair trial due to his sexual orientation.
