Until recently, it was thought the next key step for football and homophobia might come through the retired player route. A carefully worded announcement, spun by a good PR, on a busy news day by someone that no longer played the game. Two or three years after that – who knows? - a current player may even talk. Then came Anton Hysen.
Both unplanned and unapologetic, Hysen’s casual aside to a Swedish magazine on his sexuality takes the sting out of a situation that had reached unnecessary levels of trepidation. Let us not forget, that only a year ago, the FA had just completed their ‘hard-hitting’ awareness film that succeeded in freaking out everybody with it’s A-Z of homophobic insults. A lightness of touch on the subject was long overdue and Hysen’s verbal shrug of the shoulders when interviewed since provides just that, and in the most refreshing manner.
Firstly, here’s someone who’s 20 years old. He has his whole career ahead of him. It’s a career that he hopes to bring to England at some point (he sings “You’ll never walk alone” in the shower). His potential influence on the game over the next ten years is already enormous whether he continues to ply his trade in the fourth tier of Swedish football or he secures a dream move to one of the English elite.
Next, there’s his directness. None of the subsequent interviews he’s done have been couched in terms that bow to the Daily Mail or The Sun (interestingly, two of the papers to have run interviews). The people who view his dad as a homophobe are dismissed with a blunt, “Shit, they were wrong”. When asked why more footballers wont come out he doesn’t mince his words, “Its all fucked up.” Who could argue with that? There’s little tolerance either for the sins of a previous generation. On John Fashanu he is unforgiving, “Who turn’s their back on their brother? What kind of human being does that?” At last, here’s a player who isn’t pulling any punches on the issue.
Hysen is proud of his sexuality and has no interest in detaching it from his public persona in a bid for further acceptance. From the Gaydar-style photo that appears with many of the articles to the GaGa-lifting quote that he was ‘Born This Way’, here’s someone who refuses to change. At the same time, he’s no gay cliché. Currently single, he ultimately wants to meet a similarly sport-focused boyfriend and, amusingly, is at great pains to distance himself from the Eurovision Song Contest (must be a Swede thing).
Then, there’s his dad. Glen Hysen comes from football’s old school, yet he is managing his son and backing him, even making a speech at the 2007 Pride festival. Hysen senior’s playing history at Liverpool links him to both Lawrenson and Hansen, the Anfield alliance who have sat at football’s top table for years yet never spoken out on homophobia. With a former teammate adopting an impressively modern outlook and proud of his footballer son, might the silence from the games’ old guard finally be over?
All this is not to say Hysen’s barnstorming delivery should be praised anymore than that of English wicketkeeper’s Steven Davies’ measured and polite media appearances when recently coming out. Both though are examples of how quickly, in the age of social networking, change can be brought about. Their stories now spread faster and further than ever before and, aided by this culture of transparency, should encourage others to follow. After all, you can now come out at the click of a button.
Hysen jokes that when you consider dumping your supermodel girlfriend you must be gay. And here is perhaps the most important lesson that football can learn. The slow, now seemingly inevitable trickle of footballers coming out doesn’t have to be a humourless, tense experience. It can be done with a smile on the face, the confidence of youth and no little swagger it would seem.
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