/ 16 July 2010

Gay German sneer is offside

Gay German Sneer Is Offside

German football was engulfed in controversy this week after the agent of a top footballer allegedly referred to a “bunch of gays” in the national team.

Michael Becker, who has been the agent of German national football captain Michael Ballack for more than a decade, is reported to have made the comment in the latest edition of the news magazine, Der Spiegel.

In an essay, “New German Men”, Aleksander Osang recounts an interview he had with Becker before the World Cup in which the agent allegedly told him which of the players in the team were gay. He later said a former national player was ready to reveal the “bunch of gays” in the German team, according to Osang.

Asked about the sexuality of one of the newer players, Becker, who is a lawyer by profession, referred to him as being “half gay”.

Osang’s essay says Becker put the new adroit, lighter and elegant style of play that has become a trademark of trainer Joachim Loew’s players down to their homosexuality, in contrast to the typically more aggressive and offensive German style of past years, but suggested they played too delicately to assure themselves a place in the final.

According to Der Spiegel, when Becker made his remarks about the “bunch of gays”, he expected the ears of fellow journalists present to “prick up”. “But they only nodded placidly,” said Osang. “All sports journalists seemed to know the alleged homosexual conspiracies enveloping Loew’s team. The rumours accompanied our team to South Africa and evidently belong to the team.”

Ballack, who was injured just before the World Cup, spent the tournament watching his team from the VIP stands. Philipp Lahm filled in as temporary captain.

A spokesperson for Bayer Leverkusen, the club where Ballack began his career and to which he will return after his departure from London’s Chelsea soccer club, said it was shocked by the remarks. “We have absolutely no resentment towards homosexuals,” it said.

The German Football Federation, which is the sporting association with the largest membership in the world, refused to comment, while Loew said he “would not stoop so low” as to react.

But the comments have raised concerns that homosexuality remains one of the major taboos in the footballing world.

Becker neither denied nor confirmed that he made the comments but has since said he was “misunderstood” and that the interview was not “authorised”, a common journalistic practice in Germany, allowing the interviewee the right to change his remarks after the interview.

Osang said he stood by his article. — Guardian News & Media 2010