“I want to help other players who are having a hard time,” says the Gala Fairydean Rovers striker
The front Zander Murray revealed in an interview on the website of his club, Gala Fairydean Rovers, that he is homosexualthus becoming the first professional football player active from Scotland in come out of the closet.
The 30-year-old player explains that, to begin with, a weight has been lifted. He encouraged him to do so, he says, how good he felt last vacation by attending, for the first time, a Gay Pride event. “Everyone felt free and happy and it was great to feel like I was myself,” he says.
From that moment he decided that he should reveal his homosexuality. “I have explained it on the networks. At the club, I didn’t have to sit the boys in the locker room and tell them,” he details, before admitting that at first one thinks “the worst” and that people “will turn their backs on you.” . In his case, this has not been the case. “The support I’ve received is exciting,” he says.
Murray, who holds his team’s scoring record, hopes “to inspire” to other colleagues. “I want to help other players who are having a hard time because it is an issue that it’s not easy for men, and especially for footballers. “It can be very difficult and you feel very alone.”
He states that “of course there are gay footballers“. “Many of them have contacted me after reading my post and they have told me that it is incredible how strong I am in saying this.”
*MIC DROP* ???? https://t.co/Inbl5N3DFX pic.twitter.com/42Tf7y4uPM
— Zander Murray (@ZanderMurray) September 17, 2022
His wish is that one day the issue is normalized and athletes do not have the need to come out of the closet and make statements and that they feel comfortable being who they are.
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Homosexuality in sport, and especially in football, is still a huge taboo. Very slowly athletes appear who make their sexual condition public. The last one, last May, Jake Daniels, striker for English Blackpool, who was the first professional footballer to openly declare that he is gay in England in the last three decades.
Before him, the painful case of Justin Fashanu in 1990. Victim of insults and homophobic behavior after his statement, the former Norwich and Nottingham Forest striker committed suicide eight years later.