Players encouraged to wear rainbow laces to support gays
EPL clubs allow footballers to choose whether they take part in anti-discrimination campaign
LONDON : The boxes of rainbowcoloured laces landed at the training grounds of English Premier League clubs unannounced at the start of the week.
They turned out to be part of a promotional campaign by a charity encouraging players to help tackle anti-gay abuse in football by replacing their regular boot laces with the gay rights symbols for this weekend’s games.
However, the initiative has managed to antagonise leading clubs and led to the football authorities expressing reservations about the publicity-seeking strategy employed by sponsors of the campaign.
Bookmaker Paddy Power has its branding plastered over the promotional material connected to the initiative — including newspaper ads this week that feature slogans with sexual innuendo — which has caused many football officials to express discomfort.
European football’s top antidiscrimination adviser, Piara Powar, said it seems ‘‘product placement has been latched on to a social cause’’.
Most clubs said they aren’t endorsing the campaign, but that players are free to wear the laces if they want to.
Fronting the campaign has been Joey Barton, who plays for secondtier club Queens Park Rangers. While on loan at French club Marseille last season, the midfielder was admonished for describing Paris Saint-Germain defender Thiago Silva as an ‘‘overweight ladyboy’’ on Twitter.
‘‘The campaign is making some people very uncomfortable,’’ Powar, the head of European fans’ network Fare, said. ‘‘It has sexual innuendo, is clumsy and some people in the gay community are very offended.’’
The Premier League has backed the rainbow laces campaign’s underlying pro-equality message, while questioning the decision of the gay rights charity Stonewall to work with a betting company renowned for its stunts.
‘‘We were not consulted about this particular campaign,’’ the league said in a statement. ‘‘Had we been involved earlier in the process we could have worked with Stonewall to consider things like boot deals, the use of particular betting partners.’’
Another campaign group, Football v Homophobia, turned down an offer from Paddy Power to be involved in the boot-lace initiative because of what it described as inappropriate slogans.
‘‘We feel it is incongruous to run a campaign aiming to change football culture whilst using language which reinforces the very stereotypes and caricatures that, in the long term, ensure that homophobia persists,’’ Football v Homophobia said in a statement.
Chelsea communications chief Steve Atkins said the club was uneasy about the ‘‘tone of messaging, the lack of consultation and the commercial part of it’’.
The only Premier League club to completely endorse the campaign is Everton, which counts Paddy Power among its sponsors.
For Norwich, using Paddy Power’s promotional material would have conflicted with the club’s own sponsorship with the betting firm SBOBET.
The only openly gay man to play for a British club began career at Norwich. Justin Fashanu came out in 1990, but was found hanged in a London garage in 1998 at age 37.