The “Sports Free” campaign is planning a group coming out in football today on International Day Against Homophobia. The goal: create visibility. However, it is still unclear whether professional footballers will also take part.
For many years, Dirk Elbrächter hardly spoke about his private life at work. While others talked about their wives and children, he deliberately kept secret that he was living with a man.
Elbrächter is not a professional footballer, but he covered the sport as a reporter and presenter for many years and experienced how passes in his environment were called “gay” or players and referees were called “faggots”. “In this professional context, especially when it comes to football, I always had the strong feeling that homosexuality wasn’t popular, wasn’t male, didn’t belong there. And that’s why I thought: I’ll just say nothing.”
to be a role model
Since March 2022, Dirk Elbrächter has been working as Head of Content Management at Bundesliga club TSG Hoffenheim. Here he came out a few weeks ago, at the age of 51, in a management meeting. He was inspired today by the “Sports Free” campaign, which plans a group coming out in professional football to combat homophobia.
Elbrächter decided to break his silence – also to set an example for others. It’s a step he hasn’t regretted. “Everyone in the club came straight into a solution dialogue, wanted to know what they could do for the players, why I was afraid to come out. I felt a great deal of openness at this appointment.”
Dirk Elbrächter has been working as head of content management at Bundesliga club TSG Hoffenheim for two years – and has come out.
Hardly any outed football players
The idea for the “Sports Free” campaign and the group coming out comes from Marcus Urban, ex-footballer and LGBT activist. Urban was a youth national player in the GDR and was considered a great football talent in the early 1990s. But the decision to pursue a professional career would have meant the end of a self-determined life, he says. “I was afraid that I would embarrass myself if I came out. I denied myself extremely much as a footballer and bent myself ad nauseam.”
Urban wants to move forward with his story. But there still seems to be a long way to go before homosexuality is normalized in professional football. In Germany, only one ex-professional footballer has publicly acknowledged his homosexuality: Thomas Hitzlsperger. That was in 2014. Since then there have been individual coming outs by active footballers in the Czech Republic, Scotland and Australia.
It’s unclear how many are taking part
For today, Urban is planning a kind of digital gallery wall on the campaign website, where players, but also coaches, referees and other people from the professional football environment can share their stories. Urban doesn’t know whether well-known Bundesliga players will also be there. “The players are still afraid that they could fall into disgrace after coming out. There are people who earn very well from the players.”
Nevertheless, Urban is convinced that campaigns like “Sports Free” are important to create awareness. “May 17 is just a starting point,” he says. After all, several professional clubs are also taking part in the campaign, for example Borussia Dortmund, Union Berlin and FC St. Pauli.
Critics are calling for a larger alliance
Christian Rudolph is also committed to the visibility of queer athletes. He heads the competence and contact point for sexual and gender diversity of the German Football Association (DFB) and the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany (LSVD).
Rudolph criticizes that the “Sports Free” campaign focuses too much on men’s football and that women and queer people from other sports areas in Germany are not made visible.
“There is a lack of a strong alliance of supporters from the sport, so unfortunately it doesn’t seem very supportive and only focuses on a very small group,” says Rudolph. In 2008, not a single player on the German women’s national soccer team was publicly outed. There are now six openly queer women on the national team. You can learn a lot from the women here.
He thinks it’s good that the stories of homosexual managers, referees and employees in clubs and associations are also being told. Because they would also contribute to a positive climate in professional football. “If we can ensure that employees can be sure that they will not be excluded or insulted, then we will be able to bring that to the pitch.”
More openness in clubs through coming outs
Dirk Elbrächter has now experienced for himself what a coming out can achieve. With his step, he has already been able to bring about changes at his own club, TSG Hoffenheim.
For two weeks he has officially been the club’s diversity manager and contact person for people, including players, who are thinking about coming out, for example. “I also recorded a video for the intranet and got great reactions. And at the end I thought: Why did you wait so long?”