“My lawyer advised me not to go out”

Thomas Hitzlsperger, Former German footballer and European runner-up in 2008 with the German national team, he is one of the few players to have announced his homosexuality, in fact the only German to take that step. Of course, he did it when he retired, but he himself He admitted why he didn’t dare to reveal it when it was active.

This was as a result of a conversation with his lawyer in 2012 that made him back off when he was thinking about going public with his homosexuality: “He told me: ‘Under no circumstances are you talking about that! that will hurt you’. I went there to ask if I should do the coming out interview and he advised me not to. An hour later, I left and I knew: I have nothing more to say. That was in 2012, when I played for Wolfsburg,” he explained in an interview with the newspaper ‘Bild’.

Consider that homosexuality remains a taboo subject in professional football: “Yeah, I think it’s still a taboo subject.”. There is talk about it, but the players don’t identify themselves as such. It is a taboo on the field and in the locker room, also because in Germany there are no active homosexual footballers known.”