Travelling European Gay Footballers: Tournaments as an Integration Ritual

Abstract

Football often is considered to be the most important sport in the world, and this assumption holds particularly true in regards to Europe. As has been pointed out many times, football can be seen as a total social fact (see Porro and Russo, 2004, p. 220) in the sense of Marcel Mauss (2000 [1923]). It permeates essential fields of society such as leisure, culture, economy, media and law. For many people, it is a central aspect of their identity, whether as a player, a coach or a fan. Therefore it is not surprising that in recent years an increasing number of academic works on the various dimensions of football have been published. In this paper, I focus on what many consider the last taboo in sport: gay football players. I will discuss how international gay football tournaments are playing an important role in creating a gay football community in Europe. I will use theories of ritual1 to understand the processes and practices of such events. My PhD research is based on participant observation with two German gay football teams as a player and as a coach. Before turning to the empirical results, I shall frame my work through a brief overview of the state of research, general aspects about gay football teams, my field and my methodological approach.2