Thetownend.com

England player from wednesday night set to come out as gay in the Sun this weekend.

Lallana or Wilshere i reckon.

Brave decision anyway and fair play to whoever it is

I think Chris smalling. Big  respect to whoever it is, it really shouldn't matter what people get up to with consenting adults but football fans are such morons on the whole, it is quite a big issue.

Yep, whoever it is will get pelters from the morons no doubt

Cleverley.

Luke Shaw based on the haircut I reckon.

Sun have probably know for a while, wait until his profile is at his highest point and boom.  The classic tabloid method of building them up and knocking them down.

Like your brother saying "who's the poof footballer then?" you mean?

It's a fucking disgrace, hanging the carrot of revealing someone's sexuality to get people interested. That J Robinson bloke on twitter is particularly guilty of using it to plug himself. Fucking makes me sick.

Oh and fwiw, Englands women also played on Wednesday night so it's probably one of them. Not that it matters.

Luke Shaw has already said it's not him. Two hopes for this. One is that The Sun doesn't see a rise in sales because of this. The other is that it brings about a good response from the majority who will have no issue with it.

I just hope that inevitable hurricanes are not too deadly.

He has no shame, you should know that by now

Lets hope its not another Justin Fashanu situation with a similar end result.

I still think it's a myth that Fashanu killed himself BECAUSE of the abuse he got for being gay.. He was facing some pretty serious charges in the States wasnt he?

I really don't get why it's such a big deal in this day and age.

It doesn't really matter.

Remember in Fergie's book he talked about how Henderson ran funny.  Might be about to find out the reason.

Because football fans, and there's more than few on here, are ignorant fucking morons.

TBH I don't really remember all I remember is the hassle he had afterwards which at the time they said "contributed" to his suicide.

Hope Powell?

How noble of the Sun to bump up their readership.

Does the chap (presuming it is a bloke and not one of the ladies) wish to come out or is he being outed?

Imagine if its a Liverpool player.  The Sun aint popular up there already!

 :gay:

Easy to blame the Sun. If it wasn't for the amount of twats who buy the fucking rag getting their rocks off by reading this type of shite then the tabloids wouldn't even bother to publish.

It is easy, but also right.

The day shit like the Sun disappears is the day mankind takes a step forward. I don't hate all Tabloid stuff (The Metro's great for example, nicely tongue-in-cheek), just the stuff that deliberately and maliciously stirs up hate and anger for purely financial reasons.

Obviously the people who buy it and agree with every single hateful sentence are part of the problem but it's much easier (and fairer) to blame the rag for doing it in the first place.

Burn the fucking place down, along with all the newscorp offices. Fuck 'em.

You are wrong - twice.

It does matter.  It shouldn't, but it does.  We have only two or three openly gay footballers in the world, and we all know the abuse any player would get if he did come out. We also all know, surely, that those statistics don't add up.  Personally, I think if a premier league player came out while still playing in the premier league I think he would be very brave and, frankly, a hero.  People need to be comfortable being who they are.

The reason you are wrong twice is, with your second sentence, you've shown a casual example of the crude stereotyping that stops players, and people anywhere, from coming out. 

Has the lack of coverage over this surprised anyone? Or are the press just waiting until the Sunday exclusive?

Apparently it was just a twitter rumour and as such is complete bollocks

Who cares?

Ralphy

As sad and ridiculous as it is, lots of people care. Hence the debate.

I really don't care. What the fuck has it got to do with me?

That could account for a lot of threads on here, so I am not sure why you are complaining.

I don't think the vast majority of fans will be bothered by a gay footballer, most people moved past that point years ago. Sure there will be some idiots that chant abuse or similar but I don't see it being any worse than other players / fans have to put up with all ready, i.e.; gingers, fat fuckers, sexual references about their wives, being involved in the slave trade and so on.

If anyone reacts it will be their team mates, annoyed at having been naked in front of a gay bloke. That would piss me off.

One of the England women's team came out the other day. The announcement came as a surprise to me as I thought the entire team were lesbians and that everyone knew this. Apparently this is not the case.

I reckon a lot of the hype is made up by the gay community who are annoyed they've now been accepted, are no longer special and are just part of the general population.

Tell me you don't really hold those views

Is it only one of the players......? got to be at least two

OK, I admit it - I don't think all women footballers are lesbians, though I presume most of them are.

The gay abuse angle is bollocks. All footballers have to put up with offensive comments and chanting. Pretty much all of it is swept under the carpet unless it's to do with skin colour or sexuality. I'd imagine ginger's find the abuse they get upsetting yet no one gives a flying fuck and there are plenty of other examples.

I'm not saying that any kind of abuse is acceptable, just that it needs to be put in perspective and dealt with equally.