Content warning:
Suicide.
Justin Fashanu began
his career as an apprentice with Norwich City, having impressed as part of
their academy, and signed his first professional contract in December 1978 aged
just 17. Fashanu became the first black footballer to command a £1 million transfer
fee when he made the move from Norwich City to Nottingham Forest in 1981.
Fashanu became the first openly gay professional footballer when he made a
public announcement in the Sun newspaper in October 1990. He stated that his
fellow players generally accepted him well following his announcement, but he
was nonetheless aware of malicious jokes made about his sexual orientation, and
came to be a target of constant crowd abuse because of it. After moving to the
US in 1998 he was questioned by police when a 17-year-old boy accused him of
sexual assault. Fashanu fled to England where he tragically took his own life
in May 1998. According to the note he left, he feared he would not get a fair
trial because of his homosexuality.
To this day, Justin Fashanu remains the only openly gay professional player in
English football. His decision to come out publicly led him to be considered by
many in the game as a pioneer and an inspiration beyond the world of football.
Fashanu was listed at number 99 in The Pink Paper's Top 500 Gay Heroes and in
March 2009, a football team named The Justin Fashanu All-Stars was named in his
honour at an event run by the Justin Campaign, a campaign against homophobia in
football which promoted the inclusion of openly gay players in the game.
In 2019, The Justin Fashanu Foundation was founded in his memory by his niece
Amal Fashanu, with the aim of confronting prejudice in football, with a special
focus on the LGBT+ community. On the 19th February 2020, on what would have
been his 59th birthday, Fashanu became the latest inductee to the National
Football Museum's Hall of Fame.
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