by Douglas Messerli
Guí Luka and Adriano Oliveira (screenwriters and directors) Meu Jogador Favorito (My Favorite Player) / 2018 [9 minutes]
What does a soccer play do when he gradually begins to discover that he
is gay? Pai (Valdeci Gonçalves) wakes up one morning to perceive that he is
facing just that problem, and moreover that he is in love with his fellow friend
soccer play Gustavo (Raphael Machado).
What you surely don’t do soon
after the coach has demanded half the team take off their shirts (Gustavo
included) to play a scrimmage game with the other half is to head off to the
shower room pretending that you’re not feeling well. And most certainly you can’t
be so naïve as to ask your macho dad later that afternoon, while he’s watching
football on TV, whether he knows of any soccer player who might be gay.
He doesn’t even understand the
question. Just look at them on the television set, he argues, they’re all men.
Soccer players are males, as if he son’s question was about gender. Clearly Pai’s
father has never heard of Justin Fashanu, the British gay soccer player; or,
quite obviously, seen Rhys Chapman’s 2016 film Wonderkid wherein the young soccer player
has problems similar those of his son; or even heard of Ádám Császi’s soccer
pro Szabolcs who leaves his German team in Ádám Császi’s Land of Storms (2014),
in frustration over a many things, including his gay sexuality, returning to
his native Hungary, only to be killed there by a young man with he falls in
love.
In Pai’s father’s very next
sentence, he describes one of the opposing team members as a “faggot,” without
any intention of suggesting that the player is really queer.
For another day or so, Pai
pouts, while his friend is scheduled to date a girl, leaving Pai out in the
cold once more. He returns to the soccer stadium and sits down to do some hard thinking.
How can Pai explain it without endangering
any friendship that remains? Yet, as his friend continues pleading, he mentions
what he father as said and done, Gustavo asking quite simply, does Pai think he’s
gay. Yes, he admits, he’s been having these feelings recently, and moreover, he
has wanted to have sex with boys and finds he’s in love…it comes spilling out…with
Gustavo himself.
Pai hurries away, startled by
his own revelations, and now racked with fear and isolation, literally bent
over in deep pain. Soon after Gustavo comes to him, stands him up and gives him
a hug, telling him that the feeling is mutual.
So that’s how it ends in
this Brazilian encounter within the macho worlds of soccer and spots in
general. I have to say, I doubt it’s easy even today. Yet more and more sports
players have been feeling the need to speak up and out.
Los Angeles, November 17, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).
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