Soccer Fans Welcome Out Player Jakub Jankto
Bit by bit the closet door is swinging wider for male soccer players worldwide — and fans helped push it a little further with their warm welcome for newly out Czech player Jakub Jankto, LGBTQ+ athletics site Outsports reported.
Enthusiasm for the brave athlete was high at a recent match — the first Jankto played after he posted a coming out message on Feb. 13.
Outsports cited UK newspaper the Mirror, which reported that fans "loudly cheered him when he made his first appearance since coming out as gay" at a Feb. 19 match — an entrance that Jankto made "in the 70th minute for Sparta Prague of the Czech First League, with the club up 2-0 against Jablonec," Outsports detailed.
But the best was still to come, as Jankto showed what an embrace of authenticity can do for a pro player's skills.
"One minute later, Jankto played a key role in the scoring of the club's third goal, which sealed the match," Outsports recounted.
Jankto took to Twitter to rejoice that the game was "the strongest moment in my career."
"A minute I will never forget," Jankto added. "Three points, great atmosphere. Thank you to all the people at the stadium! We keep pushing."
As previously reported, Jankto came out in a video, posted to social media, in which he declared, "I'm homosexual. And I no longer want to hide myself."
"Like everyone else, I want to live my life with freedom, without fear, without violence, without prejudice, but with love," the 27-year-old went on to say.
"While some people continue to make the completely false, unfounded claim that widespread rejection by fans is a big hurdle to athletes coming out, every shred of evidence we have seen in the last decade — at least across the Americas and in much of Europe — has said the complete opposite," Outsports noted, recalling how fans cheered pro basketball player Jason Collins after he came out in 2013 and, a year later, Michael Sam, the NFL player who came out in 2014.
More recently, fans went wild for NFL player Carl Nassib after he announced he was gay in an almost offhanded manner in a video posted to Instagram. As had happened with Sam, sales of Nassib's jersey instantly took off, as fans eagerly snatched them up.
"Now even in the Czech Republic, we see an embrace of a gay athlete by fans, as well as others across the sport," the athletics site said. "After that third club goal was scored, Jankto jumped into the arms of goal-scorer Lukáš Haraslín."
"They were teammates en route to a win, and that's all that mattered."
After all, talent is talent — and you don't have to be straight to send the ball sailing straight into the goal.