Fashanu farce misses golden opportunity

Whilst I’m sure most of you will be glued to Sky Sports News as I write this, desperately hoping for Jim White to appear on screen outside your club’s stadium and reveal an exciting new signing, I want to move away from deadline day drama and take a look at last night’s BBC3 documentary Britain’s Gay Footballers.

Justin Fashanu, Amal's uncle

Presented by John Fashanu’s daughter Amal, the programme aimed to shine a light on why there are no openly gay footballers in Britain. It featured interviews with professional footballers past and present, famous comedians and football supporters. Amal also managed to score an interview with Anton Hysen, Europe’s only openly gay professional footballer. 

So what did we learn from it? Well apart from how not to construct a sensible documentary, not a lot. In short, the show was a shambles. Whilst the Twitterati and sections of the mainstream media queued up to be seen as supporting a show with such honourable intentions, its execution was appalling. 

Fashanu seemed to have conducted little research on issue, outside of the admittedly sizeable experiences of her own family - Amal's uncle Justin came out as gay before committing suicide in 1998. The questions and the subjects they were put to were lazily sourced, such as the decision to head to Brighton to interview their supporters on homophobic chanting. And her complete failure to comprehend cultural differences between 30 years ago and the present day gave the show an unseemly culturally superior sneer.

I feel so strongly because homophobia in football is an issue that warrants sensible debate. The crux of Fashanu’s show - that surely there must be at least on homosexual footballer amongst 4,000 professionals in the country - is one worth exploring. But it was done in such a sensationalist, arrogant way that it offered nothing of value to the debate.

The way Fashanu approached the issue was to try and track down a gay footballer and reveal them to the nation on TV. Or as some people call this, start a witch hunt. She visited Millwall to ask if any of the players were gay, interviewed Max Clifford - you know, the renowned football expert - and anyone else willing to tolerate the inane question: do you know a gay footballer? Such was Fashanu’s determination, one could expect her to punch the air in delight if she managed to convince a League Two reserve team player to confess to having a Kylie Minogue album, following three days of water boarding.

It wasn’t a very subtle approach to the issue and brought the debate down to its most simplistic terms. It’s almost as if the conclusion was written before the analysis; that football is too hostile a game for any footballer to ever come out, and the governing bodies and clubs are just as culpable as the fans. Society has moved on, but football hasn’t.

I personally think this is an unfair judgement. Whilst I accept that the game has a macho persona and is intrinsically linked to male subcultures such as casuals, I don’t think it’s accurate to suggest that there is huge swell of homosexual football supporters and players that feel they have been locked out of the game by machismo and prejudice.

Without straying into “some of my best friends are black” territory, of all the gay people I know, not a single one has any interest in football. They may humour me by asking the odd question about West Ham, but it’s out of politeness rather than a genuine interest. They certainly don’t harbour any unfulfilled ambitions to play the game, nor rage against the cruel way in which they are effectively barred from English stadia. For want of a more eloquent phrase, they simply don’t give a shit about football.

I feel the programme was a classic case of applying general societal attitudes to the population with the broadest of brushes. For example, Fashanu was at pains to point out that one in 10 people is gay in the UK, so by law of averages, there must be at least one gay player in each team. Woefully, she seemed to mistake this logic for fact and used it as the basis for her witch hunt. 

But I feel she would have better explained the lack of homosexuals in football by gauging the attitude of the gay community. How did they feel about watching football? About hearing certain songs at games? About their desire to be more involved? All questions that may have gone some way to answering the question of why there are no openly gay players in the game, as opposed to Fashanu’s sixth form media studies approach to documentary making.

In my own view, there aren’t any openly gay footballers in this country because there are so few, if any, playing the game professionally. I say this not from a prejudicial perspective, but from the perspective that by and large gay men aren’t attracted to the game of football, whether at a young age or as adults. If people find this view offensive, I fear they have missed the point completely. It's not that I don't believe a footballer could be gay, of course they could; I just don't think that many gay people would be sufficiently interested in the game to carve out a career in it. 

At the moment, the debate is far too narrow. It is concentrated on revealing who the footballers that are keeping their sexuality secret are, not whether the game is as inclusive as it could be. There is much the game could do to make stadia and clubs more welcoming in general. This means catering better for women, children, ethnic minorities and yes, gay people. That doesn’t mean changing the whole culture of football - another thing Fashanu seemed to want to happen - it just means removing any barriers that could dissuade a section of society attending football. 

Unfortunately, Fashanu and many others completely miss this point and in doing so, miss an opportunity to explore how football can become a more inclusive game.