In the opinion of many sports politicians, there is still no open approach to sexual diversity in professional football in Germany either. "Homosexual footballers - this reality has not yet arrived in our society and with the sponsors," says the SPD's sports policy spokesman, Mahmut Özdemir. “At the moment, a minority is being deprived of rights through financial pressure.” Footballers who do not correspond to the classic image feared “being subjected to reprisals from the sponsoring environment and no longer receiving contracts”. Özdemir knows about this from other sports. To change that, it will "need courageous champions - and the time is now." The sports policy spokeswoman for the FDP, Britta Dassler, says that homophobia plays a bigger role in football than in other sports. It is still not a disadvantageto come out. As an athlete you have a “role model effect for others”.
Fritz Güntzler from the CDU / CSU parliamentary group sees a decisive role for the fans. They are "not yet that far in breadth, that's regrettable," says Güntzler, who is also the captain of the 1. FC Bundestag. He sees women's football as a role model. “They deal with homosexuality much more openly there.” Güntzler would have thought it was right if the rainbow-colored lighting of the Munich stadium at the game on Wednesday, which was canceled by UEFA, “was not only directed against Hungary, but was also a sign of ourselves would".
Marcus Urban, spokesman for the “Gay Players Unite” interest group, is happy about the signs that the national team will also send out during the European Football Championship. "Fifteen years ago I was sitting with football players, with national players, in television programs who actually claimed that there are no gay footballers, that gays cannot play football at all," Urban told the FAS. As a youth in the GDR, he was considered great Talent, but couldn't withstand the pressures he felt as a homosexual, and retired at the age of 23. An active male soccer professional has not yet acknowledged his homosexuality in Germany, and it was only at the beginning of this year that soccer world champion Philipp Lahm warned all his fellow gay players about coming out in a book.