Football’s Coming Out, a brand-new documentary asks why homophobia is still rife in football and how one of the world’s most popular sports can combat this.
The documentary plays host to an array of high profile faces from the field of football including former Premier League manager, Ian Holloway, Leeds United striker, Patrick Bamford, and Britain’s highest-ranked openly gay footballer, Matt Morton.
The programme also aims to act as a road map, to help LGBTQ+ players to come out in future. Through discussions with contributors, it investigates the challenges that Premier League football players currently experience if they do choose to come out publicly. By exploring ways that fellow players, fans, press, social media and financial donors might react to the news, the film asks what needs to change.
A brand-new Channel 4 digital documentary is exploring what happens when the first LGBTQ+ player comes out in the Premier League and the challenges they'll face along the way.
Football's Coming Out arrives on All 4 and Channel 4's YouTube Tues 25th Jan. https://t.co/8Igh5GdRsK pic.twitter.com/K8zByE7Qzz
— Channel 4 Press (@C4Press) January 19, 2022
One of the people interviewed for the documentary is Amal Fashanu, niece of Justin Fashanu and founder of The Justin Fashanu Foundation. Justin played football between 1978 and 1997 and became the first Premiership player to come out publically in 1990. Football’s Coming Out will feature his story as a historical case study, including archive footage, to interrogate how mistakes were made.
Highlighting the lack of visibility in the sport, in his interview for the documentary Matt Morton states, “If you said you had somebody say they don’t believe somebody is gay at elite level, I’d love a conversation because I’d think they were insane. There are 100 per cent gay men in elite football in this country, without a shadow of a doubt. They just don’t feel comfortable yet to be themselves.”
This is one of the shocking revelations in a new @Channel4 documentary, Football’s Coming Out, out today.
Smith believes agents advising players not to come out publicly is "partly why most players who are gay probably haven’t made it apparent publicly".https://t.co/p0ji1njmmK
— Sam Cunningham (@samcunningham) January 25, 2022
Currently, Australian football player Josh Cavallo is the only openly gay professional player in the sport after he came out last October. Since then he has become a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ players in football, regularly speaking out about homophobia.
The programme is available to watch on All 4 from today.
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