"It's untrue that brands would distance themselves from a footballer for being gay."

BarcelonaAt the entrance to a Barcelona sports complex, the PA system broadcasts a Barça match, which turns into a distant murmur as, on one of the pitches, the balls strike a melody. The spectacle welcomes players who prefer to pass with one or two touches rather than dribble. They enjoy a match without a scoreboard. Applause, shouts of support, and jokes accompany the evening. "Free" football also exists in the city.

Training for the Barcelona Dragons, one of the Queer League teams, has ended. "I started playing in the third Queer League," says Vicen, a footballer with the Entenem association of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, at the ARA. This organization began organizing events in support of sports and against LGBTI-phobia, seeking out free sports environments to play xerinola. "There's no reason to ignore others," he adds. In their competition, there are no rankings or results, and everyone plays against everyone else.

"I realized I wasn't cut out for playing soccer, but I was cut out for coaching boys and girls." Vicen began competing at the age of fifteen, an age at which he was told he wasn't useful on the team because of his physicality. He started as a goalkeeper because he was "grosset," and only started outside the goal for the last fifteen minutes of his first season. He later rediscovered soccer at a youth level, when he felt comfortable. However, he received offensive comments that discriminated against his feminine voice. Now, he is a happy participant in the Queer's League.

According to Eugeni Rodríguez, president of the Observatory Against LGBTI-phobia, the discrimination suffered by adolescents who do not adhere to a normative body or openly declare themselves gay is stigma. These young people are singled out for their sexual orientation. "It's terrible that you have to normalize that hatred as an adolescent," says the activist at the ARA. Rodríguez ensures the implementation of clear preventive policies, including mechanisms to facilitate reporting, mediation in cases of insults, and sanctions for the aggressors.

"We win by enjoying ourselves, not by scoring goals."

Fénix FC, Dragones de Barcelona, and Panteres Grogues regularly met to play soccer. Two years ago, they organized a triangular tournament, and the two teams founded the first Queer's League. Currently, most teams know each other and have rules for resolving conflicts through mediation, which is delegated to the captain of each team. Each team follows a different line of work, but the same motto: put aside competitiveness. During the games, the teams, seemingly rivals, praise each other's quality plays.

"Football culture has pushed us out at some point in our lives," Vicen says. According to the athlete, there are people who don't feel comfortable coming out and reconnecting with football. "We try to support newcomers." There are two types of players who participate in the training sessions: people who frequently play football and feel uncomfortable coming out in the locker room, and, on the other hand, people who have never played the game and discover their love of the sport through Queerness.

"The greatest stigma for a man is being gay, and football is the temple of masculinity," says Eugeni Rodríguez. As the activist asserts, there is more LGBTI-phobic violence in amateur football than in professional football. There are also myths about elite football that are untrue. "It's a lie that brands distance themselves from a player for being gay." In this sense, Rodríguez argues that the economy can never take precedence over a person's rights and freedoms. Alberto Carrio, deputy editor of the magazine, Fair Play (ethics in sports), believes that gay men face a lack of role models in the sports and professional world. "Professional soccer players should lead the change because they have established reputations and are not challenged," says Carrio.

"Knowing how to see the beauty of a play means eliminating the scoreboard."

"The difficult thing is to shake off the competitive culture surrounding soccer," says Vicen. Both the newcomer to Queer's and the person who rejects competition don't believe soccer will become a space free of competition. "People who want strict competition don't come to play." Unlike the ideology of soccer, Queer's tries to address the issue of feeling safe, as different types of bodies coexist and run the risk of harming each other. "You find people who understand soccer like you do, and you see that you're not crazy."

"We have a football that's very differentiated by winners and losers." The Entenem Santa Coloma athlete believes that many parents raise their children to excel above the rest. "There are people who don't know how to play without winning and can't conceive of having fun." Regarding the bodies that govern football, Vincen believes there is federation work to train employees on equality, but we still find cases like Rubiales's. "Luckily, we now have role models in the sport, like Fénix FC, which competes in the Quarta Catalana," he states.

Along these lines, Rodríguez distances himself from the federal administrations. "The federations look the other way, as in the case of the kiss with Jenni Hermoso and the subsequent development of the trial". He believes that football organizations, which are supposed to ensure non-discrimination, are not doing their job and are failing to carry out prevention tasks: "The federations talk about equality and non-discrimination, but then the referees discriminate against Ripollet for wearing laces bearing the LGBTQ+ flag."

"If at some point the players had had the support of the club or the League, they would have taken the step," asserts Carrio, who believes that sports organizations reject their players' coming out because it can generate disaffection among fans and lead to punishable attacks from the stands. "It seems that no one can be forgiven for having a different gender expression," reflects Rodríguez. This is the case of Borja Iglesias, a Celta de Vigo footballer, who wears nail polish, although he has never openly declared himself gay. "On the other hand, women in women's football have shown that cordiality is also a way of understanding football," concludes Rodríguez.