Opinion Game changing

But Hitzlsperger, a midfielder who had started his career with Bayern Munich, played on the German national team and then joined the English Premier League’s Aston Villa, is the first player from the top echelons of the game to admit being gay. His revelation could prove to be a game changer.

Hitzlsperger has asserted that “homosexuality and masculinity are not contradictory”. It would have been a hard-won realisation for someone who had grown up in rural Catholic Bavaria and frequented locker rooms since he was a teenager. Football has jealously guarded its image as the mecca of masculinity, selling its players as tough and oozing a certain sweat-band wearing oomph.

Homosexuality, and all the stereotypical associations that come with it, do not fit into this template. For years, gay players were afraid to come out as it could mean losing the sport itself. Even today, the odds are heavily stacked against a player who is still active in the sport.

Across sports, athletes have started opening up about their sexuality — divers Matthew Mitcham and Tom Daley, for instance, and the Puerto Rican boxer Orlando Cruz.

The approaching Sochi Winter Olympics, which has touched off a debate on the rights of gay players, has focused attention on one of the last remaining taboos in the sporting world. Over the last century, it has shed the biases of race and, to a large extent, gender. But in the battle against discrimination on the basis of an individual’s sexual preferences, it has miles to go.