FORMER England footballer Lianne Sanderson, 36, has said there are footballers who are gay and their teammates will be aware – but it’s still not safe to come out.
The former Chelsea and Arsenal player says that it is “partly due to the fact that it wasn’t a protected environment. It still isn’t.”
She told LGBTQ+ station Virgin Pride: “I believe their teammates know but its down to that person when they come out.
“It’s not nice having to lie about who they are.
“I don’t hold it against the men because they have to deal with a lot more pressure, the eyes are on them.
“It will happen one day.”
Lianne also told My Pride Playlist host Steve Denyer that she felt the reception to ex-Leeds United forward Robbie Rogers coming out in 2013 was good.
Rogers became the first openly gay British-based footballer to come out since Justin Fashanu did in 1990 with a blog post that also announced his retirement aged 25.
He later returned to the MLS and played with the LA Galaxy.
She said: “You saw Robbie Rogers, ten years ago or so, he felt that he had to retire to then come out.
“And then he came out of retirement briefly, because he needed to see what the reception was going to be like. And it was good.
“We’ve seen Josh Cavallo, he plays in the Australian League, no one knew who he was then, now he’s come out and he’s getting Ralph Lauren endorsement deals.
“It’s almost catapulted him into the spotlight so you can see it working both ways.
“I do think we’re getting closer.”
Regarding how these are the only players to have publicly come out, she says: “It used to really kill me when people used to say, ‘I don’t want to come out because I’ll lose endorsements.’
“Now, my philosophy is that if the companies don’t want me, you don’t deserve to have me. So, you either have all of me, or you have none of me.
“So, if you don’t want to sponsor me based upon me being gay, you don’t deserve me.
“Those types of conversations even came up in the women’s game back in the day.
“There is this stereotype in the women’s game that everyone’s gay, and in the men’s game, nobody’s gay. Both are not true.”
“We’ve been taught from a young age that builders can’t be gay. Thankfully people are now realising that’s not true.
“My partner doesn’t like like a stereotypical gay person but what does that even mean?
“Sexuality is one of the hardest things in life to suppress or lie about.
“Imagine the pressure carrying that around with you as a professional footballer male or female going into a game game it weighs it’s like a monkey on your back .
“I never lived that because I never felt that way growing up but I have friends that have known from the age of four years old
that they were gay but sometimes were not able to be who they are.
“They knew they were different but couldn’t communicate that.
“The amount of mental health problems that we’ve had in our community based upon people not being able to be themselves.”
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