It may be the case that societies which embrace diversity the most effectively will field the best national sporting sides. Freedom from prejudice and discrimination will enable people with different types of characteristics and dispositions to flourish. Countries which can manage diversity are likely to have fewer restrictions to the scope of the available talent pool which filters through to the peak of the profession. And performers with characteristics which differ from the societal norm will also be able to perform to the best of their ability in a tolerant and liberal society.
WCC has therefore conducted a sophisticated univariate analysis to establish which nation is the most tolerant of diversity and which can thus be assumed to have the best national football team. WCC has chosen homosexuality/ bisexuality as the variable to determine how different nations embrace sportspeople with diverse sexual orientations. The table below shows the probable number of players from each nation at World Cup 2010 who will be openly gay or bisexual.
From 32 teams of 23 players [total: 736 players] there probably won’t be a single openly gay or bisexual player. These figures suggest that World Cup 2010 should be a very closely fought tournament.
I thought I heard about an openly gay player once, turned out he was openly grey; i.e. he didn’t dye his hair.
I don’t think many players could risk coming out as gay whilst they are still playing as it would be far too easy for a manager/club to not play them through homophobia and disguise it under the pretence of a drop in form/ability. Also, you hear of cliques of footballers who fall out with a player and then use their combined influence over the manager to get him sidelined. I can imagine similar scenarios cropping up involving openly gay/bisexual players.
I would be interested to see figures relating to transsexual players.
Probability can be quite counter-intuitive at times. For instance, at first it seems unlikely that there will be no openly gay or bisexual players at the World Cup. Naively you would expect approximately 30 using the estimated proportion of homosexual/bisexuals in the world, however, this is neglecting the fact that football players are in a particular subset of the population where there has never been a recorded instance of non-heterosexual behaviour.