A Twitter account named ‘The Gay Footballer’ – who claimed to be an under-23 Championship player who was due to come out today – had since closed their account down.
It was created prior to the weekend’s London Pride march, and has since been followed by nearly 50,000 users.
The person behind the account revealed just before deleting the account that he was “not strong enough to do this”.
He added: “Call me all the names under the sun, belittle me and ridicule me, a lot will, and I can’t change that, but I’m not strong enough to do this.
“Just remember that I’ve got feelings, without coming out I can’t convince anybody otherwise, but this isn’t a hoax. I wouldn’t do that.”
This then lead to an outpour of replies stating the whole thing was a fake and a hoax, though there were others that were more sympathetic.
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There are no active professional male footballers in England who are openly gay, former footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger came out a year after he retired.
Justin Fashanu was the only active footballer to have revealed he was gay, though he ended up committing suicide at the age of 37 in 1998.
Amal Fashanu, whose uncle was Justin, told Sky News: “I’m pretty disheartened. It’s actually upsetting. Have we made it that bad – the environment in football – that no one can actually come out?
“I’m just disappointed in a way and I feel kind of upset because if he actually is real and feels like he can’t come out, that’s really bad.
“That’s what really concerns me the most – the fact he could be gay and, actually, has been going through really bad times and now he really feels like he doesn’t want to come out.”
“I really hope it doesn’t put someone off [from coming out as a gay footballer].
“I really don’t think it would put someone off. I don’t think it has that power.
“I do believe if you are gay and you are playing football and you’re genuinely not having a good time, it kind of beats everything else.
“It’s not even a question of time. It’s a matter of when and how. I just don’t know if the right way would actually be to publicly come out on Twitter before anything else.”
After learning that the gay footballer deleted his account, fans took to give their reaction, so much was tweeted about it that the #GayFootballer hashtag was trending – find out what was said on the next page.
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