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The new football season maybe underway but some attitudes don't seem to evolve anything like as fast as the rules of the game itself.
Homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are still too widespread in top flight football - indeed, too widespread in many different sports.
The Football Association itself continues to embrace and celebrate the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community but they reluctantly accept that there is still more to do to stop the discriminatory abuse that many LGBTQ+ players and fans experience. Groups and individuals tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in the game engage regularly with established LGBTQ+ lobby groups, and coupled with the emergence of a vibrant fans movement, consisting of LGBTQ+ groups linked to professional clubs, there is now more visibility around this issue than ever before. However there is still no out gay footballer in the Premier League, and only one player, who only played once, the week before he came out, in the English Football League. There are six known gay professional footballers worldwide, as we highlighted in our recent feature on Out Gay Footballers. There are two high profile footballers who've recently been in the headlines. Jake Daniels played in the first team for English Football League Championship club Blackpool on just one occasion. At the end of the 2025 season despite his dedication to the game and his 13 years at the club, he was released from contract and is no longer playing in the EFL. The other out player is Josh Cavallo who originally signed for Peterborough Sports FC, an English National League North club, in the 6th tier of english football, after having left his previous A-League team Adelaide United in South Australia. In 2025 he transferred to Stamford AFC, who compete in the Southern League Premier Division Central. | |
Football v Homophobia
| Football v Homophobia was launched in the UK during 2010 by the Justin Campaign to combat persistent homophobia following Justin Fashanu's death. The initiative was taken over by Pride Sports in 2014, before developing into an international initiative. They challenge discrimination based on sexual orientation at all levels in football from grassroots to professional. |
| The winners of the Football v Homophobia Awards for 2026 included: | |
| In the Professional Game Award category which was sponsored by the EFL, Brentford FC were named first-time winners. Brentford is one of the most inclusive clubs in the Premier League. The Bees' EDI manager Rhiannon Maher collected the trophy on behalf of the club, which worked alongside fan group LGBeeTs and community groups Middlesex Pride and West London Queer Project on a series of projects throughout 2025. |
Come on you Bees!
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Clapton Community FC claimed the Semi-Pro (Non-League) Game Award, sponsored by PGMO and presented by the reigning Football Black List LGBTQ Award
winner, Jahmal Howlett-Mundle. Clapton play in Division One South of the Eastern Counties Football League, and were previous champions
in 2025, using their platform to advocate for inclusion.
Leftfooters FC took the Grassroots Game Award supported by Kick It Out. In a stirring speech at the awards ceremony, Leftfooters manager Garry Brown emphasised the need for trans-inclusive football activism in the current climate and how the London club, founded back in 1999, would always be proud to live and breathe its values. The Premier League’s sponsored category was the Community Trust or Foundation Award, and it was Sheffield United Community Foundation who took top honours for their outstanding education workshops and football sessions. The highly coveted Supporters Group Award with Fans for Diversity went to Proud Forest, the LGBTQ fan group of Nottingham Forest, who in only its second full year, delivered an impactful 'Proud at the Ground' campaign, a successful inclusive tournament, and shifted wider club culture through representation on Forest’s Fan Advisory Board. | |
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So can homophobia ever be kicked out of sport? OutUK's Adrian Gillan asks
Out for Sport, Stonewall FC midfielder Marc Short (right) and a former Sport England supremo if openly gay
people in sport will always be segregated, playing in gay-only teams or in a queer
league of their own.
"I dislike the term 'segregated' in relation to gay sport," says Out for Sport (OFS) chief Ivan Bussens. "I prefer to think of LGB sports clubs offering a safe and welcoming environment for people who may be gay. Additionally, these clubs encourage participation in healthy lifestyles and particularly in the 'gay community' so often seen through an alcoholic haze at smokey nightclubs." | 
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OFS is a volunteer-run umbrella group which offers LGB sports clubs and individuals the opportunity to cooperate and share experiences, and aims to become a representative body for LGB sport in the London Region. In the past, OFS has facilitated the joint organisation of multi-sport events such as the Sydney Gay Games - organising opening ceremony team tops for everyone under the 'OFS GB' banner - and has helped some sports clubs to successfully access government grant aid. Continues Bussens: "The benefits to well-being of participation in sport are well known. These benefits are particularly important to people that may be living with HIV. LGB sports clubs offer everything a 'mainstream' equivalent would - plus a support structure more suited to like minded people." "But LGB sports people in the UK are not always excluded from mainstream, integrated amateur sports," he insists. "Exclusion - due a lack of suitable education, information and role models - all depends on the relative enlightenment of the particular sports club and how the 'out' individual presents themselves." But any possible limited acceptance within amateur sport seems not to translate into the professional world. Apart from diver Tom Daley and footballers Jake Daniels and Josh Cavallo there are pretty much no 'out' male pro sports stars in the UK, and only a small number of examples from overseas. Footballer Thomas Beattie did come out, but that was only after he moved away from the sport and became a businessmen. Scottish footballer Zander Murray has now retired and that only really leaves Czech player Jakub Jankto, American Collin Martin who plays for North Carolina FC, and Phuti Lekoloane a goalkeeper for South African Second Division club Tornado FC. | |
| Ivan Bussens goes on to explain more: "There are people like Canadian swimmer and Olympic gold medallist Mark Tewksbury and Australian Rugby League player Ian Roberts. Their main problem has been - as with Navratilova and other lesbian tennis stars - that coming out is likely to adversely affect their income due to what sponsors at least perceive as adverse media and public reaction." |  Canadian swimmer and Olympic gold medallist Mark Tewksbury is one of the few pro athletes who've said they're gay. Photo courtesy www.portugalgay.pt |
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The Gay Games, which OFS is involved in, is in fact open to all sexual persuasions
and welcomes a small number or straight entrants, so it cannot be described as
segregated. But would the endgame surely be for LGB sports folk to become so accepted
within mainstream sport, amateur and professional, that the Games - and OFS - become
redundant?
Says Bussens: "Like OFS, the Gay Games is a movement which is trying to effect a change towards the broader acceptance of LGBT people through participation and inclusion in sport. Ultimately, a shift may occur where there is such widespread acceptance of LGBT people that the need for the Gay Games, and us, will cease to exist - until then I believe the both are valid." | |