Why are there still no openly gay footballers in the Premier League? Watching Rylan: Football, Homophobia and Me, the day when football finally becomes a space in which a gay player feels safe to say who they are looks closer than ever, yet still so far away.
In an efficient and effective documentary that works calmly through one strong argument after another, the first bullseye is the act of presenting the programme itself: yes, Rylan Clark, once a camp novelty on The X Factor and now a gleaming, razor-styled host of chatty radio, trashy reality and This Morning, is a football fan. Why wouldn’t he be? “I come out of Stepney Green,” he says, surveying the pitch during a West Ham United match. “If you cut me open I bleed claret, with a bit of blue.”
Walking around the streets where he grew up, Rylan recalls how almost everyone in the neighbourhood was West Ham – he does a funny, over-the-shoulder “uh” to simulate how he used to dismiss the odd rogue Arsenal fan on his street. He also remembers how, as a child, he was playing on a swing one day when he felt a hand on him, yanking him backwards to the ground. Then a boot to the head. He woke up in an ambulance, his skull fractured from being kicked and stamped on by a gang of hateful boys. If any were needed, Rylan’s bona fides to present a documentary about homophobia in football are proven on both fronts.
His first interviewee is Rio Ferdinand, who gamely submits to questioning about a 2006 appearance on a Chris Moyles radio show where he used an anti-gay slur. Seeking to explain rather than excuse, Ferdinand says such words were commonplace in dressing rooms at the time. He also sets up one of the programme’s main themes: “There’s a lot of uncontrollables,” he says, referring to the vast numbers of fans at Premier League games, and the morass of comments on social media.
Former Aston Villa and West Ham midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger, who came out as gay in 2014 after his retirement, is next. He says other players, not fans or the media, were what stopped him going through with his announcement while he was still playing, and he makes a telling point about how ingrained bigotry is, or was, in the game. Never mind there not being any openly gay men currently playing in the Premier League; Hitzlsperger is the only former PL player who is known to be gay. Even after retiring, almost nobody feels confident enough to say it.
When the programme then makes mention of the increasing influence of repressive Middle Eastern regimes in the game, the hour seems dark. Qatar hosting the World Cup after a questionable bidding process, and the megabucks Saudi Pro League being able to controversially lure an LGBT ally like Jordan Henderson to go and play there, feel like milestones passed while travelling the wrong way down the road.
But hope comes from the grassroots. “That’s what a gay manager looks like,” says Rylan, now pitchside at Thetford Town in Norfolk, as player/manager Matt Morton marshals his team. “Like any other manager.” Morton’s anecdote about the reaction of Thetford’s old-school, no-nonsense chairman Nigel Armes to the news of him coming out – Armes collared Morton in the club car park, put two hands on his shoulders and tearfully said how proud he was to have him at the club – is a story to swell the heart. “More people are good than we give them credit for,” says Morton, who notes that he also had no problems from opposition fans, while conceding that games at his level are only attended by a few hundred people, so identifying and shaming bigots is easier than it is at Premier League grounds.
Morton’s positive experience leads to a roll call of out gay or bisexual footballers – because they do exist, just not at the top of the English game: Josh Cavallo at Adelaide United, Jake Daniels at Blackpool, Jakub Jankto at Cagliari, Jahmal Howlett-Mundle at Sevenoaks Town. Attending a workshop at St Mirren FC, where youth players are taught about homophobia by gay ex-footballer Zander Murray, Howlett-Mundle says such an event would have been unimaginable back when he was the age of the boys in the room.
In his pieces to camera, Rylan is, as usual, generous and self-aware. His final remarks play down any impact his intervention in the debate might have, emphasising that he would rather not have had to make the documentary at all, and wondering when society will mature enough to complete the simple task of not caring who footballers love. That question is indeed embarrassing and bewildering, but this programme is a firm nudge in the right direction.
• Rylan: Football, Homophobia and Me aired on TNT Sports 1 and is available to stream on discovery+
