Germany's Philipp Lahm and the Gay Soccer Player Question

Germany's national team captain Philipp Lahm is getting a lot of flack these days for his new book, which includes criticism of teammates and competitors. He's backed off on some of that, reportedly, but today the hullaballoo is all about Lahm's comments that gay football players should stay in the closet and not publicly disclose their sexuality, lest they become the target of intense public scorn.

It's accepted as scriptural truth by many on the Left that every gay public figure should be public about their sexuality, because the more people see that gays and lesbians are all around the world, the more quickly prejudice will fall. I frankly tend to agree with that, and in fact I think that's what is causing the steady erosion in anti-gay prejudice here in the United States – more and more people are simply seeing that their neighbor, daughter, police officer, etc., is gay and they're realizing that it doesn't really matter, certainly not in a negative way. But I am also sympathetic to people in the public eye who fear that it would ruin their careers. You know what, it would for many of them. For every Neil Patrick Harris, there's one or more Rupert Everetts, whose advice is strikingly similar to Philipp Lahm's.

Gay-baiting in professional sports is pretty deep-rooted. Even in relatively tolerant Germany, it still makes headlines when the gay issue is brought up. The agent of Michael Ballack, the previous team captain, ridiculously accused the team's failure to win the World Cup on the presence of, in effect, a gay mafia on the team. The public reaction (at least reported in the German media that I was following) is indicative of a good trent; it seemed to treat Ballack's agent as the ridiculous figure he is and was generally supportive of the idea of gay footballers. After all, Germany has an openly gay foreign minister (Guido Westerwelle) in its conservative-liberal coalition government.

But Westerwelle's been known to be gay for some time, and his career isn't in danger, unless he doesn't improve Germany's shaky foreign policy performance. There are a number of popular gay politicians in Germany, including Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit. A young person trying to ensure that they have a career is facing a different constituency, if you will; football fans are fans of the players in a much more personal way than voters are fans of the politicians. And thus Lahm felt it necessary to let his readers know that he himself is not one of the gay players on the national team: "First, I am not a homosexual. I am not married to my wife Claudia for appearances and I do not have a friend in Cologne with whom I really live," Lahm wrote in his book, A Subtle Difference, according to The Local.

I wouldn't be too hard on Lahm, whether he's straight or gay. He's not a raving anti-homosexual. Those people are on U.S. sports teams and running for the U.S. president, they're not popular German football players. Furthermore, Lahm's is not the only voice on this issue; his teammate Mario Gomez has given gay players the opposite advice: Come out, it'll be fine.

More and more, Gomez will be proven correct and Lahm incorrect, but that's just because the public is increasingly tolerant of homosexuality and uninterested in making it a heated topic. So I do hope that gay German soccer players will publicly disclose their sexuality, but I definitely respect the decision of any who decline to do so. Assuming they're not crusading against gay rights while they're in the closet, of course.

Mario Gomez and the Unleashing of German Football

German football (i.e., soccer) star Mario Gomez says that gay football players should just come on out and things will be much better – including their playing, because they'll be relieved from their stress of hiding.

If only.

Nonetheless, his comments are meant well, and I think we're getting very close to the time when being a gay football star will be nothing to shout about. At least in Germany.

(That's Gomez, BTW, on the cover of the German edition of Men's Health, in case you're wondering.)

The Michael Ballack/Becker-Spiegel Gay Affair, Part III

If you've been following the hullaballoo over the ridiculous gay-baiting comments made about the German national team (die Mannschaft) by Michael Becker, the agent of star player Michael Ballack, then you might enjoy taking this a bit further.

Briefly, as noted here, a Der Spiegel article reported the comments Becker made, which included such inane things as referring to specific (but unnamed in the article) players as "gay" or "half-gay" (whateverthehell that means). But his real problem seemed to be the exciting style of play of this newfangled, diverse team. That in itself signified homosexuality to this professor of humankind. But as other commentators have pointed out, Becker was likely trying to talk down the new world of German football because his star client, Ballack, is every bit the representative of the old style of German football: disciplined, slow,  and unexciting.

So, it's disciplined, slow and unexciting, versus disciplined, fast and exciting and "schwul"? Well, I think the German Volk have spoken, and it's wildly in favor of the gay boys, er, the allegedly gay players, no, wait, the almost completely straight players who have been insulted by Becker as playing "gay" football.

Now, leaving aside the ancient squabble of whether gay should even be an insult, it seems inescapable that Becker was insulting the team on purpose. But here's what astonishes little old gay me: Ballack is still the official captain of the team, even though Phillip Lahm filled in for him during the World Cup; so Ballack potentially will take the field in training and competition with those players at some point, and does he really need his ancien regime agent sowing discord and ill will among his team. A team captain is supposed to lead the team, defend it vigorously. But I think each player will likely be looking at Ballack when he comes to the locker room before his first get-together with them, and they'll see Becker-Ballack.

That can't be good. And that's on top of the bad press Becker has caused for his client with the general fans. I don't know anything about Ballack's private beliefs, but I've never heard of him being bigoted. He has always been quite popular, as far as I know. He might be old-style, but I don't think of him as a bad guy. He should get a new agent to make sure others don't begin to think so.

Anyway, in the spirit of lightening up this soap opera-ish tale, I'll note that my favorite tweet that I saw on the topic was to the effect of: "Michael Ballack's manager calls German national team 'gay'; homosexuals say,' Please let it be Podolski!'"

I rather like that. And not just because Podolski wears a game shirt that's a size or two smaller than other players would wear, so it shows off his well-muscled torso. It also just reminds us not to lose our sense of perspective. Becker might represent the old-style football figure who talks dumb and tough and offensively; but Germany has moved on, which is shown by the way the country has wildly embraced this team. At about the same time as the Spiegel article came out, there was the cover story in Stern magazine (see photos above and below) celebrating this team. The German national team includes players from Turkey, Brazil, Ghana, Bosnia, Poland, Spain, Tunisia, Nigeria, and of course good ol' Deutschland. And it might be the most popular team in German history that didn't actually win the Cup.

So I decided to do Becker's job for him, and I paged through Stern's article, which features many of the players with large photos and short bios. Is Mesut Özil gay? That'd be neat. What about Cacau? Very cute, especially in the photo showing him in traditional German clothes. Jérôme Boateng and Marko Marin? Cool, yeah, sure, make them gay. Serdar Tasci? Yeah. Sami Khedira and Mario Gomez, or Piotr Trochowski or Mirslav Klose? Wonderful. Thomas Müller, Dennis Aogo, or Bastian Schweinsteiger? Nice to contemplate. Lukas Podolski? Please let it be Podolski!

The Der Spiegel Article on Ballack's Agent's Gay-Baiting Comments

In a blog post yesterday, I noted that German soccer star Michael Ballack's got a new headache: An agent who doesn't know when to shut up and keep his silly thoughts to himself. Agent Michael Becker apparently went on and on about how various members of Germany's third-place World Cup team were gay.

You can read the entire Der Spiegel article, translated into English, here (or, in German, here). The article frankly makes him sound less menacing but probably dumber than Mel Gibson, who's getting a lot of deserved heat over the latest flare-up in his long history of anti-semitic, anti-gay, misogynistic, racist rants. But Mel (who, let's be honest, is probably suffering from some mental problems) at least generally knows to shut up about his crackpot beliefs when the camera's running. (No, not always, but generally. It's usually chalked up to extreme inebriation when he gets on a hate rant. I personally don't think the drinking is an excuse; not everyone who gets drunk thinks that Jews are warmongers or that ...  oh, hell, I'm not going to repeat all the crap that man says.)

Anyway, in the Spiegel article by Alexander Osang (which is quite good and worth reading in whole), Becker is reported to be acting as if his anti-gay attitude were the norm:

He talked a lot about people who were envious of his client, because they were supposedly mediocre, ugly, untalented, bureaucratic, provincial, unmanly or gay. He told me some unbelievable stories, which I wrote down on my pad of paper. Becker didn't seem to mind, perhaps because he assumed that they would never make it into print anyway, or that they were already common knowledge. A few days later, on the sidelines of a farewell match for footballer Bernd Schneider at Bayer Leverkusen, Becker told a group of agents and journalists in the Bayer clubhouse that there was a former player on the national team who was about to go public with the names of "the gay combo." I expected my fellow journalists to be all ears, but they seemed relatively blasé about Becker's remark. It seemed that every sports journalist was already familiar with the alleged homosexual conspiracy swirling around German coach Joachim Löw's team.

And this:

[Becker] told me, beaming, how Elton John had sung the German national anthem at Ballack's wedding. When I asked him whether he thought that a player whose nomination to the team had come as something of a surprise was gay, Becker said: "He's half-gay." When he said that, I realized that all of this was somehow synonymous with something Becker could no longer understand. It was something that was light, non-ideological, dance-like, beautiful, joyful, and easily confusing for someone whose life had revolved around pecking orders and hierarchies until then.

Mel Gibson's agents dumped him after his latest escapades. (I agree with Joy Behar on her cable talk show yesterday, when she said that Mel's films won't be funded now by Hollywood studios, so Gibson's only hope is to fund more of his own films – which he can afford to do, but which won't result in the agency getting a percentage fee. So no points for bravery or integrity to his former agents.)

Now I'd like to see Ballack give Becker the boot.

Read Part III of the saga.

From WEIMAR WORLD SERVICE

Maybe I'll Have to Un-Follow Michael Ballack on Twitter: Ballack's Agent Slams German Team as "Queers"

Michael Ballack, the German team captain who missed the recent exciting World Cup contest due to injury, is dealing with another pain these days: his own agent. The Local, an English-language German news site, reports that his agent called the German national team – aka die Mannschaft – a "bunch of queers."

The remarks were reportedly made a couple months before the World Cup, when a team including a lot of young talent surprised the world by ending in third place; there had even been questions as this series started whether Germany would get out of the group stage. Best of all, die Mannschaft was a diverse team of players born in Brazil, Turkey, Africa, Poland and Germany, a mix of religions and skin color that is helping to change the image of Germany.

The comments of Ballack's agent, Michael Becker, were more throwback to olden days than representing the new era of German football. It's also not entirely clear whether Becker was honestly referring to homosexuality or if he was just speaking roughly, but he made a number of anti-gay comments in that conversation, which was reported in this week's edition of Der Spiegel.

One hopes Ballack knows how to publicly slap his agent upside the head and disown his comments, both to show he's a man of the 21st century and because he should show his support of the national team, not of his agent.

• UPDATE on this story here.

So, Paul the Octopus Is the Real World Cup Champ

So this sea creature comes from nowhere (well, actually from a German aquarium) ends the World Cup tournament with no losses, all wins.

People in Vegas or the British betting houses will probably be trying to lure him with huge offers to become in-house predictors. But I hope he stays where he is. Loyal to the home team, after all.

Third-Place German World Cup Win: Deutschland Bejubelt WM-Bronze #ger

If it wasn't for the TV announcers continually (a) complaining about the audience booing a Uruguay player, and (b) continually stressing the unimportance of this game, I'd have completely enjoyed today's third-place game between Uruguay and Deutschland.

Nonetheless, it was a 3:2 German victory over Uruguay. We got to see some players who haven't seen much (or any) game time so far in the tournament. German coach Joachim Löw apparently left his sick bed (due to the flu) to attend, and he seemed to get progressively more animated along the sidelines as his team took and lost and retook the lead. And the end result was good.

It is too sad that Miroslav Klose didn't have a chance to go after his record-tying 15th World Cup goal, but the 32-year-old player was on the sidelines with a bad back. (Perhaps from all of those summersaults.) But we still got to see a second international goal from Friedrich, some action from Thomas Müller, and even Kiessling nearly got on the scoreboard. Good work Germany, good game Uruguay, good time.

So it's all over for die Mannschaft, the German team, this young group of players that was given no chance of getting far in the tournament but that surprised everyone with a style of play that was at once disciplined (as German football stereotypically is) and exciting (as German football stereotypically is not). All of those injuries, including to the great Michael Ballack, resulted in the team pulling in some recent U21 players ans surprising the world. The team gave us some of the most enjoyable and beautiful football of the World Cup, and if they didn't win the tournament, there are two very big and very real consolations:

1. Third place still means they beat 166 other teams
2. They're still young, so watch out, everyone else.

A larger, wider, and ultimately more important result is the success of this team off the field in affecting the image of Germany. The players come from Africa, Germany, Poland, Brazil; they're being wildly celebrated in the streets of Germany; they're Christian and Muslim; they play great. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has praised the diverse team, and the people on the streets seem delighted with the the Nationalelf (the national 11). I haven't properly compared the team's diversity against the American World Cup team, but there's a good chance that Germany's would be the more diverse racially and religiously.

See the video here. More reporting (in German) from the Berlin tabloid Bild.

Germany 4:0 Argentina: Germany Advances to Semifinals with Assurance #ger

Okay, I believe they can go all the way now. Anything can happen, and of course the deeper Germany gets in the tournament, the better the teams the play. The Netherlands or Spain could prove victors. Who knows? But Die Mannschaft has now won three games with four goals; it hasn't allowed a single goal in the second half of any of its world cup games; its players keep their composure whether the game is close or they're running away with it.

They're fun to watch.

So watch 'em. Huffington Post has short (blurry) videos of all four German goals against Argentina today.

One (Mueller) | Two (Klose) | Three (Friedrich) | Four (Klose)

Count 'em up.

Who's Writing Huffington Post's World Cup Blurbs?

Someone should tell whoever writes these things on Huffington Post that goals are a natural part of soccer, and not every goal is shocking or stunning. Unless it's scored by Germany, in which case it's apparently Nazi-related.

World Cup: Germany Favorites over Australia Tomorrow

I know, no one comes to this blog for football/soccer news. But if the entire U.S. media scene can be taken over for two weeks each year with overpowering Super Bowl coverage, I think anti-soccer Americans can just go into hiding for a couple weeks every four years.

Forget about today's game between England and the United States. England will win. (Yeah, I could be wrong, but I don't care. Nor do most Americans, so winning wouldn't mean much, anyway. Pearls before swine – that sort of thing.)

But I'm rooting for Germany, as usual, and they play their first game tomorrow at 11 am Pacific time. I'll be watching.

The Local, an English-language German news-and-features web site, offers an overview of Germany's Nationalelf and its chances early in the World Cup competition, as well as a pictorial roundup of Die Mannschaft.

For those of you clinging stubbornly to your support for America's national team, Deutsche Welle (basically, a German BBC) has an English-language article with comments on the U.S.-UK game from U.S. and UK players who've played on German teams. That might sound confusing, but the article isn't, so read it.

And if you understand German, or can pretend to, here's a video from Spiegel TV and Kicker TV with a report on the German team in South Africa.

Game time.

Soccer Superstar Ronaldo Supports Gay Marriage

It's World Cup time, when the world goes bonkers over the Beautiful Game, and Americans try to remember what soccer/football is.

On my airplane ride yesterday, I sat next to a man from Japan (I think), and a woman from Germany. We talked World Cup, teams (she and I are both rooting for Germany, Ballack or no Ballack), and shared news about various national teams' success possibilities.

While waiting in an airport for a connecting flight, I came across a report on Outsports about comments European soccer (oh, can I call it football?) star Cristiano Ronaldo made when asked about the legalization of gay marriage in his country, Portugal. He said the law should be respected and everyone should have the same rights. (I think this is the link to the original interview, in Portuguese.)

That's just the latest reason for gay men to praise Ronaldo. The other, of course, was his appearance in Vanity Fair's softcore World Cup issue, which features various football stars in their briefs. That will get Americans' attention, though it won't help convince the U.S. audience that soccer/football is for straight people, too.

On that plane ride, the German woman (who, BTW, thinks Germany still has a chance as long as Lukas Podolski and Bastian Schweinsteiger are healthy and playing, just in case you're wondering) said she hopes the U.S. is successful in getting to host the World Cup in the next decade, because it would give the game a big shot in the arm in terms of American popularity. But I lived in Chicago in 1994 when the city was one of the U.S. hosts for the games, and if we're still making excuses for why Americans don't love the game 16 years later, I don't think another chance will do it. If Americans would rather follow other sports, that's fine. Everyone should get what they want.

Me? I want more Ronaldo on magazine covers.

From WEIMAR WORLD SERVICE

Discovering the Joys of ESPN 3 -- Go Vfb Stuttgart

While trying to check something on my cable setup the other day, I came across a note on my cable system's web site about ESPN 3, which is an online-only "channel" for subscribers to the cable system.

I went to the ESPN 3 web site, and found that it includes live and archived video of recent games of all kinds of sports. What pleased me most was seeing that it included German Bundesliga games. I got into watching the Bundesliga (that's the name of the German federal league in football, or as American's call it, soccer) almost 10 years ago when I first moved to the Bay Area and found that Fox had a channel that showed European football, including Bundesliga. Rupert Murdoch is, of course, partial to die Englisch sprechende folks in the UK, so the Fox channel mostly overdoses on all the ManU and Liverpool games you can choke on.

But when I first moved out here, the channel showed Bundesliga games, and I began watching. Wednesday and Sunday mornings, I developed a love for soccer for the first time in my life, and -- on a whim, because there's no real reason I should choose any German city to root for over another -- I made Vfb Stuttgart my "home" team, based on the slightly ridiculous reason that one branch of my ancestors came from the Württemberg area, which is now the Baden-Württemberg state of Germany. (My maternal grandmother came from the Berlin area, but Hertha Berlin, um, isn't playing so well ...)

So what?

Well, this isn't the most important blog post I'll ever make. But I'm just writing it to thank the good folks at ESPN for doing this, something that really expands the content that people can receive. Ever since the Fox channel stopped showing Bundesliga games, I've been unable to satisfy my interest in Stuttgart. That dissatisfaction has ended.

Seriously. Check your cable system for ESPN 3.

The Bright Side of Life -- and Fussball/Soccer

Link: sevenload.com

Ja, Stuttgart ist das Beste

Link: sevenload.com
The funny thing about following German soccer/football/fussball is that I kind of ended up adopting a team based on no solid reason. I chose Stuttgart because at the time I had learned that one branch of my family came from the Baden-Wuerttemberg area. So, Stuttgart. It paid off, emotionally, when Vfb Stuttgart won the German title last year.

Good thing I didn't learn until much later about the branch of my family that came from Berlin. Hertha Berlin isn't quite doing as well.

Now, if only Fox's cable soccer channel would start carrying Bundesliga games again ...

Sports Heroes Pro and Con

So you've seen the news: Barry Bonds hit home run number 44,839,925,258 or whatever it is. (Though I'm a baseball fan, my team is the Chicago White Sox, so I don't follow the Giants as much as others do here in San Francisco, where I currently live). This has been the source of much hand-wringing from people in the worlds of baseball, sports in general, and non-sports.

It's made me think about growing up in Green Bay during the 1970s and 1980s, when our hometown team, the Green Bay Packers, was, well, less than stellar on the field and off. In high school, a common topic of lunchtime discussion was the latest arrest of a millionaire player on rape charges. When I moved to Chicago in the 1990s, my White Sox alternately soared and sucked, but they were mostly a group of seemingly good people. (Robin Ventura, Frank Thomas, etc.) But every so often, the team's owners would decide they were going to bring in someone who'd help revive the team – and they'd misfire so badly. One was an accused wife-beater. Another had thrown a baseball at some fans. Neither served to exactly deepen my love for the team. Luckily, those dark forces were only on the Sox for a short period of time before leaving for other teams, and eventually the Sox would soar again, all the way to the 2005 World Series championship.

I continued to follow the White Sox when I moved to San Francisco in 2001, but I also began watching some European soccer (er, football or fussball, if you're German), and names of players there began to mean more to me than baseball players here. Timo Hildebrand, Michael Ballack (pictured above), Miroslav Klose. And you know what? Being separated by an ocean and a continent has helped keep me largely ignorant of detailed news of these players' lives. I assume if any of them was an out-and-out criminal, I'd have heard about it. But I only check the German fussball reports to see how my adopted teams are doing, not to get that sort of day-to-day dirt dishing that we seem to revel in here.

Distance has its advantages.