The world still has to wait for the first gay professional footballer. They already exist in the amateur leagues: gay footballers who have dared to go on the offensive - with success. Video evidence from Elmenhorst
Gays and football - they simply don't go together. Sepp Blatter himself emphasised this contradiction once again recently: the 74-year-old president of the world football association FIFA advised gay players and fans to exercise sexual restraint at the 2022 World Cup. Because in the host country Qatar, homosexual acts are punishable by up to five years in prison.
And yet there is hope: DFB boss Theo Zwanziger, 65, has been campaigning against homophobia for years. And with the upcoming generational change in the football committees, acceptance is likely to increase. Because something is happening in the lower leagues.
Bremen sports students Niko Schleicher and Dino Bernabeo are a good example of this. For their bachelor's thesis, they investigated how open the German amateur leagues are to gay and lesbian players. They summarised their findings in an 11-minute video that can be viewed online.
The conclusion: "The associations are still at the beginning of the long road to greater acceptance." Only 6 of the DFB's 21 regional associations have even responded to the pair's enquiry. "The topic is not as pressing as violence on sports fields or integration issues," apologised Rainer Lehmann from the Lower Rhine Football Association, for example.
Nevertheless, the issue is slowly being taken seriously. The Central Rhine Association, which is responsible for football clubs in the gay stronghold of Cologne, even has a counsellor who offers support for coming out.
The graduation video by the two Bremen residents raises hopes. This is also due to the main protagonist, Tony Quindt. The 24-year-old from Elmenhorst in Schleswig-Holstein is a keen footballer and - like almost all the men in the village of 1,000 souls - plays for the local district league club SIG Elmenhorst. "Pink football boots, earring on the left. Tony Quindt openly plays to common clichés," say Schleicher and Bernabeo. "Such courage is rare among amateurs, but still unthinkable among professionals."
Tony Quindt also hid his gayness for a long time. He told his SIG team-mates about a girlfriend who didn't exist. "Whenever I met the team, I had to play this role," says the young Russian-German. "That really put me under pressure."
But Tony was self-confident enough to put an end to the game of hide-and-seek. Two years ago, he simply brought his boyfriend to the club party. His sports friends reacted surprisingly openly: "Everyone accepted it straight away, no one has behaved differently towards me since then," said Tony Time Online. "Nobody looks away in the shower either."
The biggest advantage of coming out: Tony is finally really a part of his team, fully accepted with his entire personality. "Now I feel comfortable," says Tony in the video, "it's taken a load off my mind."
The example gives confidence. However, Tony's team colleague Ulf Stuhlmacher admits: "It was the number one topic the very next day. Many people wouldn't have thought that and were perplexed." Dirk Schulz, another SIG player, on the other hand, can't see any difference in the way Tony is treated even after coming out. With one exception: "We don't make gay jokes now."
Offside - A film about homosexuality in amateur football from Dino B on Vimeo
Interview with Niko Schleicher and Dino Bernabeo in the football magazine 11 friends
The Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences is conducting an online survey on "Dealing with homosexuality in the 1st to 3rd division football scene". The Questionnaire is still available until 31 December
