Justin Fashanu (1961–1998), Britain's first footballer to publicly come out as gay, will be honored with induction into the National Football Museum's hall of fame in Manchester, England.
According to Sky Sports, the footballer will receive the award next Wednesday (19), the day he would have turned 59, if he were alive. The person who will represent him on the occasion will be Amal, Fashanu's niece, who today runs the NGO The Justin Fashanu Foundation, dedicated to combating homophobia in sport.
“I believe that for Justin, this moment would be huge and essential because we were finally recognizing who he was,” Amal told Sky Sports. “Not just as an openly gay footballer, but also for being talented and the first black player in England to earn a million-pound salary.”
Fanashu committed suicide at the age of 37 after being accused of raping a 17-year-old teenager. In the note he left before he died, he stated that the relationship was consensual, but he was still afraid of not getting a fair trial due to his sexual orientation. The alleged rape took place in the state of Maryland, USA, where at that time sexual acts between people of the same sex were considered illicit.
The English athlete came out of the closet in an interview with the newspaper The Sun in 1990, when he was still playing. After that, other male football athletes who publicly came out as gay, such as Robbie Rogers and Thomas Hitzlsperger, did so only after retiring.
