'I was being told I could not be gay and a soccer player': How eight clubs are taking a stand against hom*ophobia (2024)

“It’s utterly depressing,” Casey Stoney begins. “I can’t believe we have gone back in time. I can’t believe it’s been voted in. I can’t believe it has been allowed.”

Stoney, 39, represented England 130 times as a player, played for Chelsea and Arsenal, and then became England’s assistant manager before being appointed as Manchester United’s first women’s team manager in 2018. Last summer, she joined the new NWSL club San Diego Wave FC, which debuted in the competition last month and its weekend victory over Angel City FC yielded a US television audience of almost half a million viewers, achieving near parity with Premier League fixtures such as Chelsea’s defeat by Brentford on Saturday. In short, it is an exciting time for Stoney, coaching a team spearheaded by Alex Morgan and Jodie Taylor in an inaugural season in one of the most desirable locations on the planet.

Yet as she speaks over the phone from San Diego, Stoney’s focus turns to a different part of America and the state of Florida. Last week, the state governor Ron DeSantis signed a contentious bill into law that forbids teaching from nursery to third grade about sexual orientation and gender identity, while also leaving it open to interpretation in older age groups. The law states that classroom instruction must be in a manner that is “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” Analysts have warned that parents may be able to sue the heads of schools who breach the law.

Mr DeSantis, who has emerged as a possible Republican candidate for the 2024 Presidential election, said he wishes to ensure parents can send their children to school to receive “an education, not an indoctrination”. Supporters have described it as the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, but opponents have coined it as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. President Joe Biden has described the bill as “hateful”.

Analysis of the law by the New York Times said that “classroom instruction” could mean steps as dramatic as removing books that include LGBT+ characters or that students with gay parents may not be able to speak about their family units in the classroom.

Stoney, who revealed she is a lesbian in 2014, continues: “With some of these conversations, I feel we have moved four steps forward in people being able to be authentically themselves and then we take three steps back by banning conversations. I have three kids and I want them to grow up, no matter who they are in life, knowing they can do anything they want and that it’s an inclusive world they live in.

“I’ve always tried to use my platform in a positive way, but sometimes you just want to live your life. But when you feel like things are going backwards, I feel really strongly I have to get involved and use my platform again. I don’t want my children growing up in a world that tells them they are not accepted and that their family is wrong. We have an incredible family unit and a lot of love in our house. If we were go to Florida, we would be told very different and I cannot have that.”

She continues: “If you are going to school as a young person and you are unsure about your sexuality, you may want to talk, but now you are told the conversation should not be held because it is not normal and it is banned. If you ban something then you are telling someone they are banned and their life is banned and the way they think is banned. You hear the numbers of particularly young males who take their lives because they feel they can’t talk or don’t talk or don’t feel comfortable. We’ve removed that conversation completely from the education system. It makes me really angry and actually quite sad, you feel you are progressing and the world is moving forward, then it takes one person in power who is narrow-minded to change everything.”

In football, though, Stoney sees the potential for hope and action. Today, she and Wave FC are part of a pioneering campaign spearheaded by Common Goal, the movement that sprang to fame when Manchester United midfielder Juan Mata encouraged those in football to donate one per cent of his salary to the cause. There are now 230 athletes and managers, including Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who help fund a network of 150 different community organisations in 90 countries, which works with more than two million young people.

Football, and particularly the men’s game, has long been a place where members of the LGBT+ community have felt isolated. Collin Martin, a rare gay male player, plays for San Diego Loyal and his team has signed up to the campaign. He tells The Athletic he grew up believing that he “could not be gay and be a soccer player”. He adds: “We are dealing with legislation on a daily basis that tries to discriminate against the LGBT+ community and particularly the trans community. It’s an ongoing battle for people to be able to play the game that they love.”

The battle is domestic and global. Last week, sixteen LGBT+-focused organisations accused the Qatar Supreme Council for Delivery and Legacy of the 2022 World Cup, of failing to respond in writing to eight action requests to ensure safety for travelling LGBT+ supporters and staff at the tournament in winter. These included demands as basic as requesting “explicit safety guarantees for LGBT+ people against harassment, arrest or detention”, as well as the “right of entry to Qatar” and “appropriate training in dealing with the LGBT+ community” for security officials.

This new campaign, however, takes the conversation to the next World Cup, which will be jointly held in the USA, Canada and Mexico. As the US encounters renewed legislation against LGBT+ people, Mexico is facing up to its own crisis of hom*ophobia in football.

Eight clubs across the three countries have signed up to a new idea: to commit to receiving 100+ hours of in-person LGBT+ inclusion training. The “Play Proud” campaign is supported by charities including Inside Inclusion, Impact International and Stonewall UK.

Every facet of the club will receive training; including boardroom executives, first-team coaches and players, fan group representatives and community-based academy coaches. Lilli Barrett-O’Keefe, the executive director of Common Goal in the USA, says: “Studies by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation show that four out of five LGBT+ youth are not out to their coaches and that LGBT+ youth disproportionately drop out of sport, at a rate of almost double. Some of the most marginalised communities do not feel safe in sport. We know that retention of young athletes is helped by positive coaching, so how can we work with coaches to give them the tools to create positive spaces? The Trevor Project also did research that found acceptance from just one adult mentor can reduce attempts at suicide among young LGBT+ people by 40 per cent. If we can keep LGBT+ people in sport and equip their coaches, we can truly save lives.”

The clubs involved are MLS sides Chicago Fire and Philadelphia Union, NWSL teams San Diego Wave FC and Angel City FC, USL teams Oakland Roots and San Diego Loyal, as well Canadian Premier League side Pacific FC and Mexico’s Club Tigres.

The Mexican football federation has been fined more than fifteen times since 2014 due to hom*ophobic chants during national team fixtures, culminating in FIFA banning supporters from Mexico’s Azteca Stadium for the matches against Costa Rica and Panama earlier this year. The federation’s president Yon de Luisa warned the nation’s hosting rights for 2026 may come under threat. He said: “How can we host a World Cup if we are going to have our stadiums empty? If we don’t stop now, the consequences for Mexican football could be devastating.”

For Martin, 27, the journey to acceptance within sport was not straightforward. “Growing up,” he explains, “It was really hard because I felt I had to become more masculine, more aggressive and more dominant in sport to mask the fact I was gay. I was being told, ‘You can be this really good athlete but you can’t bring along being gay’. And what are you going to do to hide that? You will have to perpetuate these masculine behaviours you are learning, which was ultimately more detrimental to the person I was trying to be. I overcompensated in ways my straight team-mates did not.”

How did that manifest? “Bullying, really,” he says, bluntly. “I felt bullied. I felt seen in ways I didn’t understand. For a while, I felt confused when people would say, ‘Oh, you’re so gay’ or ‘That behaviour is so gay.’ Then I realised this language was being used to everyone, to put them down and make them feel different and really to bully them. That’s how the language was perpetuated. I would be remiss if I did not say that I then used the same language to keep myself safe and try to belittle others. That’s a really negative cycle. I was being told I could not be gay and be a soccer player, but also in other areas it would be an issue, like when I went to church on a Sunday and feeling the pressure of ‘What will I do with myself? Am I welcome here?’ It was not only sport where I questioned if I had a place where I belonged.”

One aim of this campaign, therefore, is to provide leaders in sport, whether they be coaches or executives, with the education to help young LGBT+ people feel included. Martin reflects: “I was let down by some coaches not sniffing out inappropriate comments and hom*ophobic comments. It’s not necessarily that coaches said language themselves; but there were times they heard things and didn’t do anything about it.

“Just one comment of support from a coach or one comment to tell the broader team, ‘We will accept everyone’ goes a long way, it impacts the behaviour of straight team-mates and their understanding of the world around them.

“Far too often, coaches are taught and critiqued on how they coach and their knowledge of the game but not examined on how they show up as leaders and humans. What are they saying beyond the drills? These things are important. We have federations send people to monitor advancement on a technical side. But this campaign is thinking beyond that, and asking, ‘How are we creating spaces for people to show up?’ Both my brothers are youth soccer coaches. They’ve come a long way in understanding more about me and how it was different for me growing up as a gay soccer player. But even they have struggled with how to use their knowledge.

“Sometimes they don’t want to overstep or feel it is not their lane. I say they have special knowledge now to say something or step in. It’s not enough to just proceed as before. They have the ability to enact change and not just coach as they were coached before. We need coaches to understand how to make it clear in their language what is right and wrong; how to be proactive, share experiences and share ideas of inclusion without waiting for something bad to happen, or without waiting for someone to say something hom*ophobic and then reprimanding them.”

In English football, the Premier League runs an annual Rainbow Laces campaign and Leeds United’s first team became the first club to take part in a training session with Stonewall UK’s sport engagement manager earlier this year. Stoney is asked whether she, as a coach who spent three years at Manchester United, has encountered this level of training previously and whether it is common at elite first-team level in English football for coaches to be given the tools to help their players.

“It did not even exist,” she says. “You have diversity and inclusion roles within clubs but you do not actually get up-skilled and trained (as coaches). I remember at Manchester United dealing with Lauren James when she was racially abused and having to seek out education to better understand her experiences and the life she has lived. As a gay person, I know the challenges and hurdles of that experience, but when it comes to different challenges — whether they be race or gender — you are not really up-skilled, to be honest. It is something we as coaches need help and support with. It is why this is a really good initiative. To help us understand how to ask questions, when to intervene, what language to use. People are so frightened about language and saying the wrong thing that they sometimes say nothing at all.”

There is a need, she argues, particularly in the men’s game, for those involved to demonstrate a greater willingness to engage.

“I have been around a lot of men’s clubs and there is probably a fear we are being made to do this (training) because we have done something wrong,” she says. “You have to have people in your environment who want to have the training and are open-minded to it. Sometimes there are too many narrow-minded people who think being trained means that being gay could be something they can catch. There’s an element of just knowing it is needed. My brother is a white heterosexual male who has never faced prejudice in his life and is not aware of prejudice at all. Unless you have been faced with it and experienced it, you probably don’t know you may need it.”

The challenge, too, extends to supporters and in Mexico, the national federation is locked in a long-standing battle with the country’s own support. Mexican supporters have often chanted a slang word for a male prostitute (“puto”) at goalkeepers during games, which activists say is both insulting and discriminatory. The Mexican Football Federation received twelve sanctions — two warnings and ten fines — during the 2018 World Cup qualification campaign and this has since escalated into home matches being played behind closed doors, as happened earlier this year on two occasions. During the 2018 World Cup, when Mexican supporters chanted the word “puto” during the victory over Germany, the former Manchester United and Real Madrid striker Javier Hernandez pleaded on Twitter for the supporters to stop the chant and not “risk another sanction”.

Supporters, however, have refused to stop the chant, despite federation president De Luisa warning that the country’s ability to host the World Cup in 2026 may come under question. Resilient Mexican supporters countered that FIFA, who have awarded World Cups to Russia and Qatar, have done little to challenge hom*ophobia in states with more repressive anti-LGBT+ legislation, while taking a hard line with Mexican supporters’ conduct in the stadiums.

Indeed, even the former Mexican federation secretary general Guillermo Cantu dismissed the criticism of the chant by saying that FIFA “must understand the cultural nature of some words”. The Mexican federation even appealed at the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the sanctions. However, in more recent years, the federation has engaged more positively and players and officials have repeatedly participated in attempts to persuade supporters to desist. The federation has introduced QR codes for those buying tickets at stadiums and threatened five-year bans for those found to be continuing the chant.

The top-flight Mexican team Tigres have been bolder in challenging their own support and joined the new Common Goal campaign. In 2017, the team’s official Twitter account posted to say that for every match where “Tigres” was chanted in place of the slur when the goalkeeper kicks the ball, the team will fund improvements at a local school. The club had previously received multiple fines for the chants. In January 2020, the Tigres goalkeeper Nahuel Guzman dyed his hair in rainbow colours to raise awareness before a league fixture. He posted on Instagram: “Year 2020 on planet Earth. Cases of hom*ophobic discrimination are still present in our society, and football is no exception. Understanding our enormous social diversity and advancing rights and inclusion is everyone’s commitment. #equality”

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A post shared by Nahuel “El Patón” Guzmán 👣 🇦🇷 (@nahuelguzman111)

Speaking to The Athletic, the Argentine goalkeeper Guzman says that six schools and more than 1,000 pupils benefited from the Shout Tigres campaign. He adds: “It was a really transformative campaign and it has achieved, in at least one Mexican stadium, that people shout for the team and set aside the chant that, in my opinion, today represents a certain degree of hom*ophobia.”

As for his own multi-coloured statement of support, Guzman says: “I understand this topic is something that has become taboo in different areas of life. hom*ophobia in soccer is one thing but it is also difficult to speak about this in schools, in politics and at home. This relates to a lack of knowledge of the subject, which is why these kinds of initiatives have enormous value and providing training to people in our club will help a lot, particularly in enabling people to discuss the subject at an early age, which is fundamental. We can build a new approach and encourage more openness that leaves behind the ignorance that many of us may have.”

Diego Reyes, the Tigres centre-back who has 65 caps for his country, tells The Athletic: “I think the national team fans chant this because, unfortunately, we have seen it in Mexico as something ‘normal’ (to chant), which should not be the case. While I believe Mexicans do not intend it in a hom*ophobic way, they use it to put pressure on the goalkeeper or opposition fans, I know it is demeaning to hear these chants when there are (LGBT+) people who are impacted. We should instil into future generations that these kinds of acts should not be allowed. I sincerely believe we will change this by the World Cup in 2026, that we can grow as people. We want to have a spectacular atmosphere in Mexico in 2026, in which all families and fans come to our country and leave with a great impression.”

When these conversations take place between LGBT+ athletes, activists and journalists, the consensus is usually pretty broad. The reality, however, is that sporting environments and particularly sports team ownerships and fanbases have not always offered a welcoming environment for change and inclusion.

Stoney points out that society has not yet fully accepted hom*osexuality and “people in society work in the game”.

NBC reported last month that state lawmakers had proposed 238 bills in the US already this year that would limit the rights of LGBT+ people, compared to 41 in the entirety of 2018. Around half of the bills were specifically targeted at trans people but they also cut across LGBT+ rights in school curriculums, as well as providing religious exemptions to discriminate against LGBT+ people in certain cases. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill has received the most attention internationally but LGBT+ activists also point to bills limiting the rights of trans people to compete in sport, to use public toilets, or receive adequate health care.

In the US, an increasingly toxic debate has developed between those who advocate for trans inclusion in sport and those who argue that it can create an unfair playing field for women. Common Goal director Barrett-O’Keefe says she has received reports of referees at youth soccer matches demanding to see identification to check that the gender of young athletes matches the sex assigned at birth. She says: “We work with young people who are misgendered in schools. If you are thinking about after school activity and you are questioning gender identity, would you rather take part in soccer right now or a more inclusive activity like theatre or band?”

Stoney offers a nuanced appraisal. She says: “It depends what you determine as fair. Is it fair that these trans women can never compete because they are transgender? I don’t see that as fair. I have played in games where a player had transitioned and I didn’t have any issue with it. I think the issue comes when there is a strength or pace bias because of the transition from male to female.

“It needs education; people understanding more about hormone levels, the performance measures and margins when people do transition. I have to be honest; I am not educated enough to (fully) answer this question. I do want sport for all and I do want inclusion and want everyone to have the opportunity to play. I am not educated enough to know the science, to know when it is legally OK, when the disparity comes on the performance side.

“I want to listen, learn and I want to understand. I have watched many programmes about people who transition and I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like to be trapped in a body you feel is not yours. Then to be told you cannot play a sport you love or be marginalised in that way. I would want to understand a hell of a lot more.”

There will, therefore, be no shortage of people who are hostile to elements of the training proposed.It is pointed out that some people, perhaps even among the comments section of this website, will instantly deride the programme as “woke”.

Common Goal director Barrett-O’Keefe says: “I don’t see this work as being woke. We don’t have targets so that X number of people come out at these eight clubs within the next two years. This isn’t about getting people to come out. This is about helping LGBT+ people to feel safer and more included in soccer. The Liga MX and MLS All-Star game was stopped for hom*ophobic chanting last August; that is one of the biggest days involving the two countries hosting the World Cup paused for hom*ophobic chants.”

Martin says: “I realised I may be the first gay person that my team-mates have been close with, which is depressing but sport also gives a unique opportunity to bridge that gap. Can we have these conversations earlier so we don’t have adults saying, ‘This is the first time I’ve spoken to a gay person’ or ‘This is the first time I’ve discussed the issues’. We are not talking about going into extreme detail with young kids but just introducing the broad idea that the next person may be different to you in some way.”

Barrett-O’Keefe makes a business case, too, for those who may be unconvinced by the ethical arguments of inclusion. She says: “Every team wants to sell tickets, so why not include a portion of a community that feels inherently excluded from your game? We don’t have to redo every bathroom in a stadium (to accommodate transgender communities), but could we add a family bathroom so people feel included? I am trying to appeal to straight, white business owners as much as I can because they are the people who have to make this change. If that means the pitch rests on appealing to LGBT+ fans to increase ticket sales, or pointing out that an LGBT+ person will perform better if supported, or to highlight there may be more academy talent to be secured by increasing the talent pool — all of that only makes you stronger as businesses.

“These eight clubs said yes inside 24 hours. There were other clubs who said, ‘Can you do it in a few zoom sessions instead?’ The answer is no. If you cannot see the value in putting your money and time where your mouth is and what you preach on your social media pages, then this programme is not for you. There have been clubs who have been keen and asked us to adapt the model so they can check a box to say they did this thing but we will not sacrifice what we believe will bring behavioural change in the long term, which is a significant commitment. Our hope is other teams raise their hands and ask to be part of it next year. It cannot just be a session for coaches on grassroots level, or a mission statement on a website or a pride night once per year.”

(Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Sam Richardson)