Documentary film “The Last Taboo”
Professional football and homosexuality
“The Last Taboo”: The documentary tells the story of professional footballers and their coming out.
© ZDF / Jonas Julian Köck
The documentary “The Last Taboo” tells the story of football professionals and their coming out. For some, it ended in disaster, for others it gave hope.
The award-winning documentary filmmaker Manfred Oldenburg (“Kroos”, “The Miracle of Bern”) has tackled an important topic for the film “The Last Taboo” (2024). At the beginning of the year, the coming-out stories were in Professional football can already be seen on Prime Video, today Tuesday (11 June) – three days before the start of the European Championship – ZDF will show the documentary at prime time at 8:15 p.m.
From tragic taboo breaking to coming out icon
While homosexuality no longer plays a role, or at least hardly any, in most areas of society, the way it is dealt with in professional football seems like an anachronism. “According to current estimates, of the 500,000 active male football professionals worldwide, fewer than ten are openly homosexual,” says the broadcaster’s accompanying text to the film. In “The Last Taboo,” some of the few who have already broken the taboo have their say. Among others, former footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger (42) tells his story again. In 2014, he went public with it in a legendary “Zeit” interview, which made him a kind of coming out icon in this country.
The film also tells the story of British professional footballer Justin Fashanu (1961-1998), who came out in the British tabloid newspaper “The Sun” in 1990 during his playing days. “I am gay!” was the headline. He was the first to break this taboo. But his story did not end well, Fashanu took his own life. In the documentary, his niece Amal Fashanu looks back on the drama. She was also there for her dead uncle at his posthumous induction into the “English Football Hall of Fame” in 2020 at the national football museum in Manchester.
Help with depression and suicidal thoughts is available from the telephone counseling service on the free number: 0800/111 0 111
Real rays of hope
Not quite as tragic, but still momentous, was the coming out of Marcus Urban (53), a former player in the GDR junior league. After his coming out, the young man was able to forget his big dream of making it to the Bundesliga. The fact that there is pressure in professional sport and that football associations continue to behave rather passively is also confirmed in the documentary by experts and insiders of the international football scene.
But screenwriter and director Manfred Oldenburg also shows examples that give hope. US professional Collin Martin (29) and British trainer Matt Morton live something almost like normality as gay professionals…