By Those in The Game
Ex-Chelsea manager Luiz Felipe Scolari is on record as stating he would have thrown out of the team a player whom he found to be gay. He made the comments during Brazil's 2002 FIFA World Cup campaign.
"I've had players over the years who were single and read books and so others said they must be gay...I think being openly gay would be something very difficult to live with in football.... You can get drunk and beat up your wife and that's quite acceptable, but if someone were to say 'I'm gay', it's considered awful. It's ridiculous." —Former manager Alan Smith speaking on 'the last taboo in football'.Likewise Djibril Cissé, partly in jest, said that he refused to kiss his team-mates after scoring a goal for fear of being thought of as gay.
Public relations mogul Max Clifford claimed that two major clubs had approached him wishing to portray a "straight" image.
In October 2006, England international Rio Ferdinand caused controversy by calling BBC Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles a 'faggot' live on air, just days after team-mate Paul Scholes was also in trouble for an alleged homophobic remark about him being gay with a funny hair do. Moyles jokingly asked Ferdinand: "If you had to, who would you rather go out with - Smudger or Scholesy ?". Ferdinand replied: "That is not my bag that, that is not my game, talking about going out with geezers" and when Moyles suggested he would always prefer Smith, Ferdinand declared: "You’re a faggot." He quickly apologised for what he had said, stating "I'm not homophobic".
In 2010 the FA aimed to shoot a video designed to discourage anti-gay hate-chants on the terraces, however, they reportedly couldn't find a player from the Premier League willing to endorse it and so postponed the video. Pundits believed that players were scared to associate themselves with homosexuality.
Read more about this topic: Homosexuality In English Football, Homophobia
Famous quotes containing the word game:
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)