Former footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger: Homosexuality on the field is still a taboo

Even in 2024, former German national soccer player Thomas Hitzlsperger (41) believes it is very unlikely that an active professional in the Bundesliga will come out as gay. As part of his new Amazon documentary “The Last Taboo”, “Hitz The Hammer”, who only celebrated his coming out after the end of his active career, spoke to the newspaper about the possible reasons for this.

In his opinion, the German media landscape and the fact that “there is no known active homosexual footballer in Germany” are responsible for this. “You see the symbols, the fan curves and you think: everything is no longer a problem. But with the main actors, the players, there is a problem.” A possible coming out would immediately put the actor in question at the center of local reporting.

A professional shows how it could be done

For Hitzlsperger, this is an understandable form of interest, but one that is likely to appeal to very few of the actors affected by it: “There is still some curiosity. But the fans like personal stories, you write about separations, you write about a new love, about children, about “Wedding, above all, that’s part of professional football. We can’t pretend that it doesn’t interest anyone. But what’s different is this intermediate step of perhaps having to say publicly that you’re gay.”

At the same time, Cagliari professional Jakub Jankto (28) is already a good example of how smoothly the coming out of an active player from a big league (Serie A, Italy) can go: “He made it public once and has done so ever since “We didn’t talk about it much. Then we realized that it didn’t have to be a big deal.” Exactly a year ago, on February 13, 2023, the Czech international made his homosexuality public with a Twitter video.

Was he himself given bad advice?

Hitzlsperger played his last game for the national team in 2010, and three years later he also ended his career at club level. A year later, he declared in an interview with “Die Zeit” that he was homosexual. He doesn’t regret waiting until after his professional career. “I would have been interested to see how my colleagues and the public reacted. Unfortunately, I can no longer have that experience. But I’m doing well now.”

But he can still remember how an experienced media lawyer gave him the advice in 2012: “Under no circumstances talk about it!” At that time, Hitzlsperger was still a player at VfL Wolfsburg and went to the lawyer “to ask whether I should do the interview about coming out. An hour later I left and knew: I’m not going to say anything anymore.”