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In a recent report on the exposure of footballers in Italy to threats and attacks from the public, the Footballers’ Association (AIC) noted that the return to stadiums after the restrictions due to the pandemic has been characterized by “a significant increase”. of racist chants and xenophobic messages, of verbal insults and physical threats “in particular towards top players, with a concentration towards foreigners”.
According to relationship “Black footballers are the first target of racist insults”, which however also concern footballers from the Balkans or Latin America. For Italian footballers, on the other hand, the insult “is often linked to their origin from the southern regions”.
Racism, intolerance and many other forms of violence are rooted problems in many sports, and above all in football, the mass sport par excellence. To those who attend stadiums in Italy, these behaviors will certainly not sound new. In our stadiums, many of which are old and often neglected, there are still places exempt from many rules that regulate the functioning of our society, and they are the same ones that still make an adequate reaction to cases of racism too difficult, for example.
The cultural backwardness of the world of football can be clearly seen in the contents of the latest AIC report, where cases of homophobia are not even mentioned, which are indeed there: probably because today in Italy no homosexual professional footballers are known, yet there are about 7 thousand professionals.
Despite the claims painfully obtained over the years by homosexuals in contemporary society, football is one of the last great social spheres in which the cultural legacies of the past still prevail, and among these a sort of implicit rejection of homosexuality by the so-called “environment”.
For a single footballer, coming out still scares too much, not only at the idea of what he will have to suffer from the thousands and thousands of spectators – the same ones who still continue to make monkey noises at black players – but also from opponents and even from teammates: there are many players, even famous ones, who in the recent past have used inappropriate or derogatory tones towards homosexuality.
It is a problem that only concerns men’s football, given that in women’s football, female players live their sexuality freely and publicly. For all these reasons, the recent coming out of the Czech footballer Jakub Jankto can represent a significant point in the recognition of a freedom that up to now has in fact been denied to hundreds or thousands of athletes by prevaricating if not openly homophobic behavior.
Jankto is 27 years old, in the prime of his career and can be considered a top-level international player. He currently plays for Sparta Prague, one of the reference teams in the Czech Republic, but is on loan from Getafe, a club in the Spanish Liga, one of the big five European football leagues. Jankto has over 40 appearances for his national team and until a few years ago he played in the Italian Serie A, where he had been for a long time between Udinese and Sampdoria.
After talking about it some time ago to his current team, on Monday he told everyone he was gay with a short and direct video whose last words will remain above all, also because it has a certain effect to hear them pronounced again in 2023: «I want to live my life freely: without fear, without prejudice, without violence, but with love. I’m homosexual and I don’t want to hide anymore.” The comment of his ex-partner was also significant: «He will certainly be relieved and will no longer be worn down by this thing. He was afraid that people wouldn’t accept him.’
In 2021 there was the coming out of Josh Cavallo, a professional in Australia with Adelaide United; last year, however, the first English player in over thirty years, Jake Daniels, from the Blackpool youth team, had come out. In 2014, a few months after his retirement, it was the German Thomas Hitzlsperger who revealed his homosexuality after a long career also spent for Lazio and for the German national team.
Jankto is therefore not the first active footballer to come out as homosexual, and coming out in football is not a competition: but no one had ever done it in his position as an international player, widely known and still with the prospect of many years to high levels.
Furthermore, Jankto’s choice also indirectly concerns two large countries and two of the major football leagues in the world, the Spanish and the Italian ones, whose great resonance could encourage one to express oneself freely, or at least not to hide oneself, even in private, many other professionals who have not felt like it up to now: and the more there will be, the less it will be considered an exceptional thing.
The comment written by the AIC at the conclusion of the report on abuse by the public seems to follow this direction, even if it does not expressly mention homosexuality (and although its last two presidents have always used very cautious tones on the subject): «Many footballers professionals, who were the subject of the episodes surveyed, have chosen to react by making use of their media presence: a constructive, educational attitude, often picked up by colleagues, fans and the media”.
