Images of Masculinity  Real Men

Everything used to be so much simpler: you could be sure that the soccer players you would see on the pitch were real men. And these days? Though social debates have now found their way into sport, soccer is still battling with outdated gender role concepts. We take a look at the status quo.

Very few topics of conversation unite people as effortlessly as soccer does. Whatever situation they happen to find themselves in, people seem happy to chat about ludicrous sliding tackles, curving crosses, goal-hanging, butterfingered goalies and catenaccio. Soccer is the perfect icebreaker and an ideal way to dispel any awkwardness – be it with your surly father-in-law or your taciturn work colleague at the coffee machine.

There’s one thing that can sour this light-hearted atmosphere at a moment’s notice, however. One that should immediately sound the alarm bells. Because it can take an otherwise innocuous conversation into a direction nobody can control. It’s the phrase “real men”, generally followed up by the lament that there aren’t any these days. What’s meant are those classic relics from a bygone era of soccer. Men who didn’t let anyone boss them around, on or off the pitch, who drank, were full of bluster and refused to conform – a species last spotted some time back in the eighties or nineties. Real men like Ansgar Brinkmann, Mario Basler and Stefan Effenberg.

This often segues quickly into a fundamental debate about what constitutes the ideal male – a man who is strong, confident and emotionally stunted. It’s an image that has of course crumbled elsewhere, yet persists nonetheless in soccer. In the sort of settings where opponents are described as “wimps” and pink jerseys are “gay”, where men in the dressing room still talk crudely about women and misogyny hasn’t even been invented yet, it’s amazing how backward-looking people can still be. This is an environment in which men aren’t merely allowed to be sexist and cross every possible red line – they are actually encouraged to do so.

So Where’s the MeToo in the World of Soccer?

The various high-profile players who have been accused of sexual violence in recent years paint a particularly bleak picture: Mason Greenwood, Achraf Hakimi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lucas Hernandez, Benjamin Mendy. The list seems to just go on and on.

When such accusations are made, they tend to follow a similar pattern: almost as a knee-jerk reaction, someone will trumpet the phrase “innocent until proven guilty”, then the seeds of doubt will be sown by insinuating that the victims had some sort of ulterior motives, and ultimately the system – a kind of “boys’ club” – will close ranks to protect its own. In 2023, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung teamed up with research network Correctiv to explore the case of former German national team player Jérôme Boateng, a convicted violent criminal. The investigative journalists revealed how managers, agencies and the clubs themselves drew a safety net around the soccer player. His former girlfriends were coerced to sign non-disclosure agreements, and there was talk of an “organized silence”. If in doubt, find for the attacker.

What soccer has failed to do to this day is take a long hard look at itself – and engage in a comprehensive MeToo-style debate.

It’s no surprise then that women often feel uncomfortable in this profession. Just do a quick random survey of the people you know and you’ll find hardly a single woman who hasn’t experienced some sexism in the context of soccer. On the way to the match, in the stadium or perhaps afterwards online. These experiences are rooted in history. After all, soccer was not originally intended for women. Until 1970, the German Football Association (DFB) officially prohibited them from playing – for fear they would become “masculinized”. The historian Gertrud Pfister sees this as the expression of deeply entrenched myths about masculinity: “[Women who play soccer] challenge the prevailing gender order, and by extension the social order.”

Much has shifted nowadays. Social debates about gender role concepts are also finding their way – albeit only gradually – into soccer. Fabian Reese, a player with Hertha BSC, regularly appears on pitch with his fingernails painted. It may be a small gesture, but its impact is big. “I want to show my feminine sides, too,” he says, explaining that he is keen to break with the “toxic machismo” in soccer.

“Come On, Guys, Just Show Each Other a Little Love, for Heaven’s Sake!”

And yet soccer could so easily be two steps further on and set an example in society. If only it realised just how ambivalent it looks from the outside – after all, where else are men so content to be in such close proximity, forever hugging, touching, caressing and even kissing one other, revealing their vulnerability? Where else can you watch such strong and virile bundles of testosterone leaping on top of one another like puppies, joyfully engaging in their orgiastic huddles? And where else do the alarm bells sound immediately if for once they fail to show each other such affection? That’s when people suddenly start assuming that something’s awry within the team. That the players’ hearts are no longer in it. What the fans are really wanting to say is: Come on guys, just show each other a little love, for heaven’s sake!

It’s just that virtually no one dares say this out loud. Which makes it all the more remarkable when someone does. In the spring, 29-year-old Christian Dobrick came out as homosexual. He’s the under-19s coach at FC St. Pauli. “Gays,” he says, “are still regarded as alien life forms in professional soccer”. Dobrick found the courage nonetheless. He was tired of disguising his true self. He wanted to be something that has been presumed missing in action in soccer – a man who doesn’t hide away. A real man, in other words.