James McMahon questions why there are no openly gay footballers
It’s now just over 20 years since Justin Fashanu, Britain’s first and, to date, only openly gay footballer, agreed a deal with the Sun to come out. Last year, the PR kingpin Max Clifford teased the press by stating he’d recently advised two high-profile Premier League stars not to follow in Fashanu’s footsteps, adding that football “remains in the dark ages, steeped in homophobia”.
A football club set up for asylum seekers in Vienna has found itself pressurised by the Austrian state. Paul Joyce explains
“FC Sans Papiers is a fight against racism and discrimination using modern and elegant means – sport,” explains its president Dr Di-Tutu Bukasa, who founded the side in 2002. Inspired by the French political movement of the same name, the Viennese team offers asylum seekers who lack an Austrian residence permit the chance to play regular lower-league football.
Paul Joyce reflects on the tragic death of German goalkeeper Robert Enke and examines football's poor record when it comes to helping players with mental illness
Unlike many of today's players, people felt like they genuinely knew Robert Enke. An ambassador for children's heart charities and anti-fur campaigns, the German national goalkeeper embodied a new generation who rejected the combative machismo of Oliver Kahn and Jens Lehmann in favour of an unspectacular integrity. Yet it turned out that no one knew Robert Enke at all, not even his Hannover 96 team-mates. "You learn over time how to trick the media," he once said, tellingly. "You talk a lot, but say nothing."
Dear WSC
In WSC 272 Jonathan O’Brien finds it remarkable that Celtic’s Bertie Auld “straightfacedly asserts that beating Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup final in 1965 was more important than the title win a year later”. But Auld is not alone in his assertion. No less a man than Jock Stein said in the Dunfermline history Black and White Magic: “It wouldn’t have gone as well for Celtic had they not won this game.” The Celtic history The Glory and the Dream also notes: “The largest framed photograph in [Stein’s] office at Celtic Park showed Billy McNeill borne aloft at the end of the match.”Celtic had won nothing since “the 7-1 game”, a freakish League Cup final triumph over Rangers in 1957. So this win, Stein’s first trophy seven weeks after officially becoming manager, stopped a rot which was threatening to turn Celtic into also-rans in Scotland. Without it the Lisbon Lions may never have been and there may only ever have been one “nine-in-a-row” in Scottish football. And that would never do.
Mark Murphy, Chessington
When Danny Brady found out his sister's boyfriend was an ex-pro he feared the worst. This is what happened when they met…
When I first discovered that my big sister had started going out with a retired footballer, two thoughts bubbled up into my mind: “Ooh, I hope he’s minted and still gets tickets”; and “Please God, don’t let it be Frank Worthington”. Because in the mind of the general public, it’s either/or when it comes to retired footballers. They either spend their time sitting on a throne made out of bricks of £50 notes, or they’re scowling at the world behind a paper-shop counter or run-down bar, gazing wistfully at faded cuttings from The Pink ’Un on the wall.