British Neo-Pro Soccer Players Much More Accepting of Gay Teammates

In Britain, researchers spoke to 22 young men (age 16-18) on the verge of becoming professional soccer players (footballers). What they found was that all the participants would openly accept one of their colleagues coming out. All of the participants in the study identified as heterosexual and come from the lower to upper working class families.

In the last study to look at this issue (2002), Professor Eric Anderson, of the University of Winchester (who is one of the three co-authors of the new research) found that gay male athletes were tolerated by teammates, "as long as they played the sport well." However, there were no findings of active "support."

This is good to see - British football has traditionally been pretty homophobic, although not quite as much so as U.S. football (not soccer).

This shift seems to speak to the more open and accepting perspectives of the millennial generation, young people who have grown up with gay men and lesbian women in their daily lives. Exposure to people who are "other" reduces the sense of otherness and they become "like me," which is the key to acceptance.

Full Citation:
R. Magrath, E. Anderson, S. Roberts. (2013, Jul 30). On the door-step of equality: Attitudes toward gay athletes among academy-level footballers. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 48(4), 1-18. DOI: 10.1177/1012690213495747

You can read the whole paper at Academia.edu or at the Sage Publications site. For now, here is the abstract followed by a summary of the press release from Science Daily.

Abstract
In this semi-structured interview research, we investigate the attitudes of 22 academy level association football (soccer) players who are potentially on the verge of becoming professional athletes. We find that, as a result of these men belonging to a generation holding inclusive attitudes towards homosexuality, independent of whether they maintain contact with gay men, they are unanimously supportive of gay men coming out on their team. Thus, this research supports a growing body of literature suggesting that team sport culture is no longer a bastion of homophobia in the UK. Their support includes athletes being unconcerned with sharing rooms with gay players, changing with them in the locker rooms, or relating to them on a social and emotional level. The only apprehension they maintain is that having a gay teammate might somewhat alter homosocial banter, as they would not want to offend that individual.

* * * * *

Generational Shift in Attitudes Among Young Soccer Players Towards Gay Teammates

Aug. 27, 2013 — Young soccer players (footballers) on the verge of becoming professionals are now much more likely to be supportive of gay teammates than a decade ago, according to new research from sociologists at the universities of Kent and Winchester.

Conducted via interviews with 22 Premier League academy footballers aged 16-18, the research found that all the participants would openly accept one of their colleagues coming out.

The research, led by Dr Steven Roberts, of the University of Kent's School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, and Professor Eric Anderson, of the University of Winchester's Faculty of Business, Law and Sport, made use of intermittent interviews over a four-month period between November 2012 and February 2013.

All the participants identified themselves as heterosexual in their interview and all said they were from a lower to upper working class background. The study results showed a marked difference in acceptance of gay teammates compared to the findings of the last such study, carried out a decade ago.

Dr Roberts said: 'The interview results were broadly consistent with other recent research on young British men of their age in that these men showed no overt animosity towards gay men.

'In fact, they were more than tolerant and showed an inclusive attitude toward the hypothetical situation of having a gay teammate, best friend or roommate reveal their sexuality. The results are clear: among the 22 future footballers we interviewed, all were unbothered by the issue of gays in sport.

'This indicated a marked shift in perception from the last study. Although there was some evidence then that attitudes were changing, there has been a generational shift over the last decade. Lads now are saying "we would openly support and accept one of our colleagues coming out." '

The last similar research into the attitudes of young sportsmen was carried out in 2002 by Professor Eric Anderson, of the University of Winchester, one of the three co-authors of the new research. His study found that gay male athletes were tolerated by teammates, 'as long as they played the sport well'. However, there were no findings of active 'support'.

Professor Anderson said: 'Recent comments by Robbie Rogers, the former Leeds United footballer who came out but then left the English game to return to play in the US, suggested he didn't know how easy it would have been to make the transition.

'However, our research does suggest that attitudes in the locker room among young British players would lay the foundation for a player to be able to come out.'

Ian Sinclair - Football’s Dangerous Masculinity

This is an interesting article from The New Left Project, based in the UK, on the issue of masculinity and football (soccer for the American readers). However, I suspect this perspective speaks equally well to our own issues with hyper-masculinity and American football.

Key observation:

As these representative examples show (I could easily have cited countless others) the type of masculinity constructed and reinforced in the footballing world shows football to be an important, highly conservative influence on contemporary gender relations, largely working to reproduce existing inequalities in society.

This is important to be talked about - when I was growing up in sports (football, basketball, and soccer), I had coaches who instructed us to "take out" the other team's best player. As we got older, locker room talk about females became incredibly objectified, boasting of conquests (sexual or otherwise) escalated, and subtle restrictions on what constitutes a "man" became more hyper-masculine and less human.

Then we wonder why some men grow up to be violent, emotionally cold, and insensitive to the feelings or needs of others.

Football’s Dangerous Masculinity

May 21, 2013
by Ian Sinclair

As the UK’s unofficial national sport and with the season running for nine months a year it often seems like it’s impossible to escape from football. It’s the default conversation topic from the office to the barbershop; the latest Premier League happenings round off television news broadcasts and large portions of our newspapers are dedicated to reporting and discussing every minute detail of ‘the beautiful game’. This cultural supremacy has been demonstrated by the recent retirement of Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United for the last 26 years. Treated in a similar manner to the death of a member of the royal family it was the top story on the BBC website and splashed across the frontpage of all the next day’s newspapers. Even Nick Robinson, the BBC’s Political Editor, felt the need to comment, gushing that Sir Alex was the “greatest living Briton”.

However, considering football’s importance to many people and society more broadly, progressives have remarkably little to say about it. Certainly there is ongoing concern about the ever increasing capitalist nature of the game but what is almost completely lacking is an honest discussion or critique of the ideology of the game – in particular football’s relationship with men and masculinity. As Mariah Burton Nelson notes in her 1994 book The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football: Sexism and the American Culture of Sports, “We need to take sports seriously – not the scores or the statistics, but the process. Not to focus on who wins, but on who’s losing.”[1]

As Men’s Studies scholars have noted about sport generally, the hierarchical and highly competitive world of football is one of the key sites for the construction and reproduction of masculinity today.[2] Through playing and watching the game boys learn what it means to be a man – which values and behaviour are manly and which are unmanly. “Be tough”, “be strong”, “play to win”, “get stuck in”, “don’t be intimidated”, “don’t cry”, “don’t wimp out” – all are common encouragements and admonishments to young footballers. And when they return home to watch Match of the Day they hear commentators praising their idols for “dominating” their opponents and “controlling” the game. Those players that play through great pain are heralded as heroes and those, like Roy Keane, who intimidate and revel in the violence and hyper-aggression are feted by fans and awarded with trophies. “I'd waited long enough. I fucking hit him hard. The ball was there (I think). Take that you cunt. And don't ever stand over me sneering about fake injuries”, wrote Keane in his autobiography about his premeditated revenge take down of Manchester City’s Alf-Inge Haaland in 2001, which effectively ended the Norwegian’s career. “My attitude was, fuck him. What goes around comes around. He got his just rewards. He fucked me over and my attitude is an eye for an eye." A subsequent investigation led to Keane being banned for five matches and fined £150,000, although sceptical readers may wonder how long a prison sentence Keane would have received had the incident occurred outside of a football stadium. Three years later Keane was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame.

While Roy Keane was Manchester United’s enforcer on the pitch, Sir Alex ran the club like a dictatorship. “Fergie’s rule was absolute”, notes Channel 4’s John Anderson. “Loyalty was a quality to be demanded and repaid in equally unswerving fashion, and his word was law.” Pundits marvelled and chuckled at his ability to discipline his players and play macho psychological mind games with his opponents. On several occasions he has been banned and fined for using abusive language to match officials. In a widely reported dressing room incident he kicked a boot in anger that hit David Beckham in the face, requiring stitches. Never mind that this bullying management style would get him immediately sacked from every other workplace in the UK – Sir Alex, we have been told repeatedly in the last week, is the greatest manager ever to have graced the English game. His “achievements demand not just respect, they deserve to be studied and learned from”, argued Robinson. Tony Blair’s own enforcer Alastair Campbell may look up to Ferguson, but what has any of this got to do with those working for democracy, justice and equality except to serve as a guide about how not to behave?

As these representative examples show (I could easily have cited countless others) the type of masculinity constructed and reinforced in the footballing world shows football to be an important, highly conservative influence on contemporary gender relations, largely working to reproduce existing inequalities in society.

And nowhere is football’s resistance to contemporary gender norms more obvious than when talking about the total absence of openly gay players in the professional game. The first openly gay footballer was trailblazer Justin Fashanu – also the first one million pound Black player. "A bloody poof!" was how his manager at Nottingham Forest football club, Brian Clough, described him. Justin’s own brother disowned him when he came out in 1990. “He has come out publicly and stated his sexual preferences, so now he will have to suffer the consequences. I wouldn’t like to play or get changed in the vicinity of him”, said John Fashunu. John went on to present the hit TV show Gladiators. Justin killed himself in 1998.

While sports scholars like Ellis Cashmore and Jamie Cleland argue homophobia among football fans has significantly decreased since those dark days the lived experience on the ground gives less cause for hope. In January 2012, Robbie Rogers left Leeds United by "mutual consent". A month later he announced he was gay. In a statement Rogers said that remaining in football after declaring that you were gay was "impossible".

Football is also stuck in the stone age when it comes to women. This shouldn’t be surprising when you consider sports scholars have long explained that professional, organised sport as we know it emerged in the late 19th century in response to a number of challenges to men’s traditional power, not least the rising consciousness and power of women in society. As Michael Messner, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California, notes:

Sport was a male-created homosocial cultural sphere that provided men with psychological separation from the perceived ‘feminization’ of society, while also providing dramatic symbolic ‘proof’ of the natural superiority of men over women.[3]

More than a century later and “the locker room” continues to be “the last preserve of the all male world”, according to Michael Kimmel, Professor of Sociology at State University of New York.

Football’s endemic sexism hit the headlines in 2011 when the Premier League’s top commentating team, Sky Sports’s Andy Gray and Richard Keys, were caught making disparaging and sexist comments about a female linesman and to a female colleague in the studio. In another incident Keys, off air and talking about Jamie Redknapp’s former partner, lewdly comments “Would you smash it [have sex with her]?... You could have gone round there any night and found Redknapp hanging out the back of it”. Gray and Keys were dismissed by Sky Sports, but it’s important to note their behaviour only became an issue when a (presumably disgruntled) colleague leaked the footage to the media.

What should be clear from all these examples is that the type of masculinity promoted reproduced in the footballing world is not an aberrant masculinity which can be dismissed as the way other men – criminal and psychopathic men, perhaps – act. Rather, it encapsulates many of the values and behaviours that make up mainstream, perhaps even the dominant, form of masculinity today.

The problem, as Cynthia Cockburn and Ann Oakley cogently argued in 2011, is that these “widespread masculine traits and behaviours are dangerous and costly both to individuals and society.” According to Government figures, in 2009-10 men were the perpetrators in 91% of all violent incidents in England and Wales: 81% for domestic violence, 86% for assault, 94% for wounding, 96% for mugging, 98% for robbery. 2009 Ministry of Justice figures show men were responsible for 98% of sexual offences, 92% of drug offences and 89% of criminal damage. 99% of child sex offenders are male. On the road men commit 87% of all traffic offences, 81% of speeding offences, 97% of dangerous driving offences and 94% of motoring offences causing death or bodily harm.

To summarise, the sport that so many of us support financially and emotionally, and the players we idiolise and cheer on, promote a highly conservative version of masculinity that is damaging, sometimes deadly, to women, children and society more generally. Where, then, are the progressive and feminist voices raised in protest and anger at the gender politics of football? Where is UK Feminista? Where is the Fawcett Society? Where are the critiques in the Guardian’s women’s pages? And where, most importantly, are the men who say they are feminists who want more equality between men and women? As chef and Norwich City fan Delia Smith once shouted: “Where are you? Where are you? Let’s be having you! Come on!"

~ Ian Sinclair is a freelance writer based in London and the author of The march that shook Blair: An oral history of 15 February 2003 published by Peace News Press. ian_js@hotmail.com and https://twitter.com/IanJSinclair.


[1] Mariah Burton Nelson, The stronger women get, the more men love football. Sexism and the American culture of sports (Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), p. 8.
[2] For example Michael Messner, ‘Boyhood, organized sports, and the construction of masculinities’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, January 1990, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp-416-44.
[3] Michael Messner, Out of play. Critical essays on gender and sport (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007), p. 92-3.

David Beckham's Best Goals (Videos)

Okay, so yesterday I posted a satire piece from The Onion that poked fun at David Beckham, probably the best-known soccer player on a planet where soccer is still the most important sport (outside of the U.S.).

Beckham could make a soccer ball move in ways that seem to defy the laws of physics, a skill so remarkablke that a film was named after his futbol magic, Bend It Like Beckham.

A couple of weeks ago, after Beckham announced his retiurement and played his final home game for Paris Saint-Germain (he was not named for the line up in tomorrow's last game of the season, so his career is offically over), The New York Times posted these videos of Beckham's most beautiful and mind-bending goals. Enjoy!

Beckham’s Best

May 16, 2013By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Some highlights of David Beckham’s best goals over his long career in England, Spain, the United States and France.

… And some of his best goals in M.L.S.

… And from his days at Manchester United

… And even a few from his season at Paris St.-Germain.

… And just for fun

This satire from The Onion is kind of funny. However, I have a soft spot in my heart for Beckham. I've long admired his gender-bending courage in how he dresses and behaves.

The only time I ever saw him play in person, after the game was over, he walked around the field barriers and signed autographs for nearly 45 minutes until security took him off the field so the next game could begin. Before leaving the field, he gave his jersey (signed) to a young girl in the stands.

He was also one of the best players I have ever seen live. When he came on the field a few minutes into the 2nd half, the quality of play seemed to increase several levels. He sent a pass 40 years in the air right to the foot of his teammate who was making a run on the opposite side of the field. His accuracy and control of the field was amazing to witness.

Highlights From David Beckham’s Career

SPORTSGRAPHIC • ISSUE 49•21 • May 23, 2013

With David Beckham retiring last week, Onion Sports examines notable moments from the soccer player’s illustrious 21-year career.

• 1993: Signs first professional contract at Old Trafford, with a guaranteed signing bonus of 3 million soccer balls
• 1994: Plays season on loan from Manchester United with the Hiawatha, IA Youth Soccer League Boys U12 Wildcats
• 1997: Caps off Premier League–winning season that included memorable victories against Manchester United foes Coventry City, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday, Percy of the Hills, Friendly Arthur, Burbridge Tickles, and Nottingham Forest
• 1998: Infamously receives a red card during the World Cup after kicking out at Argentina’s Diego Simeone, an incident that would leave the South American with incredibly serious fake injuries
• 1999: Begins dating Spice Girl Victoria “Posh Spice” Adams, leading to the British tabloids nicknaming the couple “Posh Spice and David Beckham”
• 2005: Following Real Madrid’s victory over Barcelona, Beckham’s mother forgets to pick up her son, leaving him to wait in the parking lot for like two hours
• 2007: Makes hotly anticipated MLS debut before crowd of 30 screaming Galaxy fans
• 2010: Tears Achilles tendon, even though he was just playing soccer
• 2011: Wins an MLS cup with the LA Galaxy, completing the Triple Who-Gives-A-Shit Crown

Soccer Player Robbie Rogers Reveals He Is Gay . . . and Walks Away from the Sport at 25

I'm glad Robbie Rogers felt safe enough to come out and live his own life, but I am saddened that he felt the need to walk away from the sport that was his "escape, my purpose, my identity." Maybe one day he return to soccer, after all he is only 25 years old.

On the bright side, some of his fellow players applauded his courage and wished him well:

"Brave men like you will make it so that one day there's no need for an announcement. That day can't arrive soon enough," tweeted Eddie Pope, a U.S. veteran of three World Cups and an executive with the MLS players' union. 

"Much love and respect for you," tweeted U.S. teammate Herculez Gomez, a sentiment echoed byD.C. United's Chris Pontius, the Galaxy's Omar Gonzalez and women's national team star Abby Wambach.

I hope Rogers is not the last to live his life openly - and I hope the next man to do so will not feel the need to leave his sport.

Soccer player Robbie Rogers reveals he is gay

Robbie Rogers, 25, a Mater Dei High graduate who has played in MLS and for U.S. national team, says in blog post that he is gay and is 'stepping away' from soccer.

Mater Dei High graduate and professional soccer player Robbie Rogers announced he's gay and will be stepping away from the sport. (Drew Hallowell / Getty Images / August 10, 2011)

By Kevin Baxter | Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2013

Robbie Rogers said he had to choose between being a soccer player or being himself.

He ultimately choose to be himself, stepping away from his sport Friday in a powerful blog post in which he revealed he is gay.

"I always thought I could hide this secret," wrote Rogers, 25, a former Mater Dei High standout who played five seasons in Major League Soccer and had 18 appearances with the U.S. national team.

"Football was my escape, my purpose, my identity. Football hid my secret, gave me more joy than I could ever have imagined."

But, he concluded, "I realized I could only truly enjoy my life once I was honest. . . . My secret is gone, I am a free man, I can move on and live my life as my creator intended."

Rogers did not use the word "retirement" in his seven-paragraph announcement, instead saying, "Now is my time to step away. It's time to discover myself away from football."

Rogers' career has been in free-fall since he left MLS'Columbus Crew in 2011, the year he earned his last cap with the national team.

Troubled by nagging injuries, he was most recently playing for Stevenage of League One, the third tier of English soccer. And in his blog Rogers suggested his decline on the field was influenced by the emotional toll of trying to hide his homosexuality — although in Columbus, at least, that was said to be something of an open secret.

"You hear from athletes all the time that performance suffers from living in the closet," said journalist Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of the gay sports website Outsports.com. "I'd love to see him try again. It might be a mistake for him to stop now.

"There's a great chance that he will . . . have a clear head and be able to focus on the sport in a way he hasn't been able to in his adult life."

No active athlete in a major professional U.S. team sport has come out as gay. But Rogers was being lauded for his courage on social media Friday.

"Brave men like you will make it so that one day there's no need for an announcement. That day can't arrive soon enough," tweeted Eddie Pope, a U.S. veteran of three World Cups and an executive with the MLS players' union.

"Much love and respect for you," tweeted U.S. teammate Herculez Gomez, a sentiment echoed byD.C. United's Chris Pontius, the Galaxy's Omar Gonzalez and women's national team star Abby Wambach.

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

Battling Homophobia in Professional Sports

In recent years (mostly the last two or three years) there has been an increasingly vocal movement within professional male sports to eradicate, or at the least confront, the pervasive homophobia that has long been a part of that world. We know things are beginning to change when hyper-masculine men such as Brendon Ayanbadejo of the Baltimore Ravens, Scott Fujita of the Cleveland Browns, and Chris Kluwe of the Minnesota Vikings (all are straight) become vocal and even "impassioned" spokesmen for same-sex marriage.

Even boxing has an openly gay fighter, featherweight Orlando Cruz.

But there has never, ever been a professional male athlete who has come out while still playing his (team) sport in the U.S. David Kopay (Redskins running back), Billy Bean (Dodgers and Padres outfielder), John Amaechi (NBA center-forward), and Wade Davis (Titans, Seahawks, and Redskins cornerback) are gay athletes who waited until they were well out of their sport to reveal their sexual identity.

The NHL (You Can Play), MLS, and MLB have taken some leadership in trying to create a more welcoming atmosphere for gay players to feel safe and not feel compelled to be closeted. The San Francisco Giants were followed by a handful of other baseball teams, as well as teams and players from other professional sports, in participating in Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project.

35 N.H.L. players, including Henrik Lundqvist of the Rangers, Corey Perry of the Anaheim Ducks, and Daniel Alfredsson of the Ottawa Senators have supported You Can Play, a campaign created and promoted by hockey’s Burke family to open doors for gay athletes to participate in sports. Brenden Burke died in a car accident in 2010 - he came out while serving as manager of his college hockey team - his brother Patrick Burke is a scout with the Philadelphia Flyers. Their father, Maple Leafs General Manager Brian Burke, marched in Toronto’s gay pride parade with Brendan, and again after Brendan died.

The You Can Play campaign . . .

. . . is intended to “make locker rooms safe for all athletes, rather than places of fear, slurs and bullying,” said Patrick Burke, a scout with the Philadelphia Flyers and a founder of the project. 

The message will be shown for the first time during the first intermission of NBC’s Sunday afternoon telecast of the Bruins-Rangers game [note: this is from 2012]. Thirty-five N.H.L. players, including award winners and All-Stars, have committed to take part in the project, Burke said. The You Can Play Web site is scheduled to go online Sunday. 

Several Major League Baseball teams made similar announcements last season, as did N.B.A. players after a series of incidents in which fellow N.B.A. players used antigay slurs. (LA Times)

Unfortunately, there is still a rainbow ceiling for gay male athletes. 

Just ask soccer player David Testo. When Testo, a decorated midfielder with the Montreal Impact of the second-tier North American Soccer League, came out on a Canadian TV show 13 months ago he said the initial reception was positive. But his contract had expired two weeks earlier and after his announcement the phone stopped ringing. 

Testo, 31, hasn't played a game since. 

"It seems like there is a lot more support these days. But for someone to come out to the public or just to their teammates, it takes a lot of just coming to terms with it yourself," Testo says. "Most of these athletes are younger and they haven't had their time to kind of explore and just come to that kind of self-awareness. 

"I would love for someone to be able to do that in their prime and really be a role model, an inspiration for others. When that one special [player] does it, it's just going to open the floodgates. But it's hard. When there's a lot of money on the line, when there's endorsements on the line, it's different. Why would anyone want to risk that?" (LA Times)

While change is happening, men like David Testo still suffer from the homophobia infecting professional sports. He was a high quality player - nothing about his performance before coming out would have led team to ignore his availability when his contract ended.

In England, Manchester United's heterosexual goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard (of the Premier League - English football's version of the NHL or MLB, sports with lower tier professional leagues) joined the campaign to kick homophobia out of football (that's soccer to my American readers).

IT WAS bold and unequivocal. ''Gay people need a hero. They need someone who dares to step forward and stand for their sexuality.''

He's not the only one. West Ham winger Matt Jarvis became the third heterosexual Premier League star to appear on the cover of Attitude (a gay magazine). Former English rugby union international Ben Cohen launched a foundation with the goal of bringing an end to homophobic bullying. In Australia, Wallabies flanker (rugby) David Pocock has vowed he won't marry his girlfriend until gay couples are afforded the same right.

Still, according to Caroline Fusco (University of Toronto), homophobic attitudes are still embedded in professional sports.

“Sport as a space has been one that has really been there for the production of a certain kind of hyper-masculinity. Particularly when you think of pro sports, the big ones: hockey, football, baseball. These all tie in to the rugged notion of masculinity, and these attitudes remain — that gay men aren’t masculine,” she says.

*****

“Homophobia is also tied in to social class, to race as well,” says Fusco. “Who gets this hyper proving ground for masculinity?”

According to Fusco, these anti-homophobia campaigns are important, but she feels they need to take "a more holistic approach."

“These campaigns are really important, [but] there’s something about the implementation of the plan. It starts very early for boys and girls, at school, and schools need to be involved. Municipal, provincial and federal governments need to get on board.

The same is true here in the U.S. If we want to change the nature of the culture, it starts with teaching our children that every human being has the right to love the person of their choice, whether that person is the opposite sex or the same sex is not relevant.

And this needs to be a part of our sports programs - with a zero tolerance policy for bullying or harassment of gay teammates, or even of other students in the school. Then the programs being created for athletes at the professional level need to be re-tooled for middle school, high school, and college athletes.

I played soccer in Seattle for a couple of seasons on a gay (well, GBT) men's team. There is nothing girlie or weak or contagious about those men. They were ferocious athletes and nice guys. As the token bi guy (most of the team was gay, with a couple of straight guys, as well), I was accepted without hesitation - all they cared was that I was a good passer and an efficient scorer.

Even though this was a "recreational" league, most of these guys had been stars of their high school teams and many of us had played college ball. The level of competition was at least equal to that of my NAIA-Division III school.

I don't know what it will take for the first man at the professional level to feel safe coming out while still playing. But I know that the efforts of You Can Play and the It Gets Better Project (among others) will be instrumental in creating that safe space.

TEDxLSE - Nilo Bagga - The Art of Samba Soccer

Nilo Bagga (above, with some of his players) is an undergraduate at the London School of Economics and Social Sciences (LSE) and the Founder and Director of Samba Soccer Schools. He employs Brazilian soccer (Samba Soccer) to help young people (mostly boys) develop creativity and spontaneity, as well as to develop interpersonal skills and self-esteem. This is a young man making a difference in the world through, to quote Pele, the Beautiful Game.

From TEDxLSE.


Nilo Bagga - The Art of Samba Soccer 

Nilio Bagga is an undergraduate at LSE and the Founder and Director of Samba Soccer Schools. He also operates as the Head Coach employing teams of coaches to deliver projects in local communities across Warwickshire. Samba Soccer Schools is a fast growing, innovative and inspirational soccer school that teaches football the Brazilian way. Nilio established the enterprise during his gap year in 2009 and in that time, has delivered 23 projects and taught over 500 young people. Samba Soccer Schools has a two-fold purpose. The first is football; to learn how to play with the flair and freedom that epitomises the Brazilian game. The second is social development. By using Brazilian football as the vehicle Samba Soccer Schools is able to develop discipline, confidence and knowledge in young people. Nilio was recently shortlisted for both Coach of the Year and Football Development Project of the Year at the inaugural Asian Football Awards, Wembley 2012. Currently, he is researching the under-representation of British Asians in coaching and managerial positions at top flight football in the UK for his dissertation.

First Openly Gay American Soccer Player Comes Out

Via Think Progress - it seriously should not even be news that a gay man plays professional soccer. And it sucks that he could win an MVP and not acknowledge his partner (at the time) - the man he loved and who no doubt has supported him in his career as an athlete.

When I lived in Seattle, I played on a men's league soccer team that was mostly gay men - in all of my experience in soccer (4 years varsity in high school, 3 years in college), I have never played on a team with men who were tougher, more aggressive, and more competitive than those guys. Being gay has nothing to do with sports skill.

First Openly Gay American Soccer Player Comes Out 

David Testo has become the first openly gay professional soccer player in the United States. He told the CBC: “I really regret not have coming out publicly earlier… Living the life of a professional athlete and being gay is incredibly hard. It’s like carrying around a secret and never actually being allowed to be yourself.” He admitted he has thought about quitting athletics before and described how uncomfortable he felt receiving an MVP award and not being able to recognize his partner. Watch the full interview, in which Testo gets choked up talking about his struggles:





(HT: Towleroad.)