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.

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.

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

Vanity Fair Gets Vain-er

Just noting. For the soccer, of course.

Lifetime Bans for Iranian Footballers

As noted in a previous post with video, six players on the Iranian national football (soccer) team wore green armbands in the first half of a recent game against South Korea. The color green is the color adopted by the opposition candidate Mousavi in the recent clearly rigged Iranian presidential elections. The game, which was televised live in Iran, surprisingly failed to delight the hard-line ultra-religious Iranian regime, and that's not only because the team's loss effectively ended the country's World Cup hopes.

Anyway, some commentary on the event noted that it was a particularly brave act by the athletes, because they would have to return home after the trip. And now the other shoe has fallen: Four of the athletes have been banned for life from the sport (we do not yet know about the other two), and the Iranian government is continuing a wide-ranging assault on other Iranian football figures related to reformist causes. That's all according to a report in the British paper The Guardian.

It's still not too late for some American professional athletes to sport a green armband in their next televised appearances. But I doubt any or many will.

Athletes with Guts: Iranian Soccer Team Shows Their Colors

The captain and five other memebers of Iran's national football (er, soccer) team wore green armbands during the first half of a game against South Korea in Seoul. Watch the BBC News report:


As they mention in the video, these players are due to return home after the game, coming back to a country that has banned foreign reporters, is killing and beating up protestors and other opponents of the religious regime, and frantically trying to put a stop to the biggest threat to the government since the 1979 revolution. Godspeed to the protestors, I think, and good for the national team players who demonstrated some real bravery.

I'd love to see some MLB players sport a green armband or ribbon. It might not be their country, but it's a universal cause.

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.