"On Manuel Neuer and his Rainbow Armband" by Jackie Hedeman
From mid-June through mid-July, for several hours a week, I watched the European Cup soccer tournament. Postponed a year, Euro 2020 was something of a time capsule. Teams qualified nearly two years ago and the players were kept in fighting form throughout two truncated and grueling club seasons. They played to empty stadiums under the roar of past jubilation—and suspiciously few boos and whistles mixed and piped onto the pitch by a hyper-specialized DJ. It was an odd year, to wildly understate the case, and many of my favorite and favored teams went home early but not before the tournament provided me several moments of unadulterated glee.
Here’s the deal: Manuel Neuer, German team captain, six-foot-tall blond man and possibly the world’s greatest goalie, elected to wear a rainbow-striped captain’s armband, first in a friendly against Latvia, and then in the first two tournament games against France and Portugal. Following the second match, it was announced that UEFA (Union of European Football Associations, the European Cup’s governing body), was considering sanctions on the grounds that the armband was a political statement.
UEFA’s statues require that players “promote football in Europe in a spirit of peace, understanding and fair play, without any discrimination on account of politics, gender, religion, race or any other reason.” A breach of these statues, according to UEFA’s disciplinary regulations, could include the actions of someone who “uses sporting events for manifestations of a non-sporting nature.” Before Euro 2020 kicked off, UEFA had already required Ukraine to remove the message “Glory to our Heroes” from its team jerseys, explaining that the slogan, a rallying cry from the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution that ousted Kremlin-backed then-president Viktor Yanukovych, was “clearly political in nature.” Al Jazeera reported, “UEFA’s move came after Russia sent a letter of complaint to the governing body…over the yellow jersey, which also features an outline of the country’s borders that includes Russia-annexed Crimea and the separatist-controlled regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.” UEFA agreed that the slogan must go, but okayed the outline of Ukraine on the grounds that the borders represented on the jersey were the same borders recognized by the United Nations, and were therefore not a political statement but a statement of fact.
Ultimately, UEFA decided not to fine Manuel Neuer and the German Football Association, reaching the conclusion that the rainbow armband, unlike “Glory to our Heroes,” was not a political statement, but a statement of solidarity. They reached a similar conclusion when individual players, or entire teams, began to take the knee before games, an action which affirms UEFA values rather than challenges its regulations. Leading up to Euro 2020, a spokesman reiterated, “UEFA has a zero-tolerance against racism and any player who wants to demand equality amongst human beings by taking the knee will be allowed to do so.”
Euro 2020 was the tournament when Manuel Neuer wore his rainbow armband and Belgium, England, and Wales consistently took the knee, but it was also the tournament when, on the same day UEFA announced that they were considering sanctions against Neuer, a group of Hungarian spectators and members of the fascist “Carpathian Brigade,” marched into the stadium at Budapest armed with banners. One portrayed a stick figure kneeling with a giant “no” symbol drawn over it. Another read simply, “Anti-LMBTQ,” the Hungarian queer acronym. Racist chants directed at French players rang out around the stadium.
Partly in response to this incident, as well as a law passed in Hungary that month banning any positive portrayal of queer and trans people that might be shared with minors, the mayor of Munich wrote to UEFA requesting to illuminate the stadium in rainbow colors for the Germany-Hungary game. His request was denied. The illumination, UEFA reasoned, unlike Manuel Neuer’s rainbow armband, was aimed at a particular nation, and therefore qualified as a political statement. In fact, UEFA explained, it wasn’t the rainbow that was political, it was the request itself, “linked to the Hungarian football team's presence in the stadium for this evening's match with Germany.” Their statement continued, “For UEFA, the rainbow is not a political symbol, but a sign of our firm commitment to a more diverse and inclusive society.”
On the night of the Germany-Hungary game, the Munich stadium was not illuminated in rainbow colors, but Neuer was again wearing his armband. The German team’s social media accounts posted a delightfully passive aggressive picture of said armband ready and waiting to be worn. The caption read, “ALLES BEREIT,” ALL READY, with rainbow and German flag emojis. Neuer was wearing his armband and German supporters and local gay rights groups were standing in the parking lot, handing out rainbow flags to fans entering the stadium. Elsewhere, across Germany, empty soccer stadiums were bathed in rainbow light.
It was at approximately this point in my Euro 2020 viewing experience that I lost my shit. In a good way. Something in my stomach, some wellspring of joy, burbled to life. I didn’t know what, exactly, was driving Manuel Neuer’s commitment to the armband. My favorite theories were 1) gay family member, 2) gay teammate, 3) he got the Holy Spirit. Whatever the reason, Neuer was a man possessed and I was a woman obsessed. It was a little odd, this obsession, a little uncharacteristic on the face of it. Neuer was a 6’4’’ blond, German jock, probably straight and doing literally the bare minimum when it came to visible solidarity. Nonetheless, it was clear that even the bare minimum was enough to ruffle UEFA’s feathers. I delighted in Neuer’s pregame social media posts. I delighted, too, in the exchange Neuer would go on to make with England team captain Harry Kane during their match; Kane joined Neuer in donning a rainbow armband, and Germany knelt beside England.
Finally, I delighted in Neuer’s postgame interview where, stripped down to a red, sleeveless t-shirt, goalie silks nowhere to be seen, he wrapped his rainbow armband around his hand, gesticulating and touching his face so that the cameras could catch it.
My team is France, but I have loved Manuel Neuer for a long time, probably since the 2012 European Cup, and definitely since the 2014 World Cup when he showed off his Sweeper Keeper reputation, repeatedly exiting his box to race for the ball like a defender, or when he leapt out of stasis to punch a sure thing out of the goal. Neuer exudes calm. In a sport where many a player’s signature move is clutching his knee and rolling around in contortions, Neuer’s placidity stands out. He brought the same no-muss-no-fuss approach to his rainbow armband solidarity show.
This summer, when I wasn’t watching Manuel Neuer, I was inhaling stories of reporters uncovering injustice. I think I just like it when people are good at their jobs. Neuer is straightforward, it seems. In 2018, he was briefly dogged by gay rumors after his statement—“it would be good if a professional football player came out because it would help others to do the same”—was mistranslated in a Mexican publication and reported as a coming out. At the 2018 World Cup, he was the target of homophobic chants.
This happens all the time, to people who aren’t famous, handsome, white guys, and those people don’t get credit for not melting down into homophobia, so I don’t want to give Neuer credit for being decent, except that I do, I really do. Every time I think of Neuer and his armband my soul lights up.
I haven’t felt this way since 2015 when, at age twenty-six, inexplicably and almost overnight, I got really into One Direction. This chapter of my life is partly explained by the well-documented appeal of a boy band: the freedom to watch a group of men be friends more or less unselfconsciously. The friendship may be a lie, of course, or if not a lie exactly it is a closeness as carefully manufactured as their public personae, but if it is a lie, it is a lie that unearths a deep fantasy, that when men hang out together they are kind, emotionally demonstrative, and nonthreatening. There was not a whiff of the locker room in One Direction’s numerous interviews and behind the scenes shoots. It was a dream.
Then, of course, there were the gay rumors, exacerbated seemingly by the band itself. At their Columbus concert in Ohio Stadium, I strained to spot Rainbow Bondage Bear where I knew he would be—gaffer-taped on display somewhere close to the stage. Rainbow Bondage Bear was, more accurately, two bears, both with rainbow fur, who would show up outfitted with different, increasingly over-the-top costumes and props, near the sound booth at every One Direction concert. Why would a boy band, or someone affiliated with them, purchase and decorate two bears, festoon them with rainbow regalia, and leave them propped up reading queer history books? Why not. Theories abounded, as theories tended to do in the One Direction fandom. Some thought the band was trolling those fans who thought that two or more of them were sleeping together. This strikes me as an inefficient way to quell gay rumors, but what do I know? I’m just a woman who one day got very interested in the idea of Harry Styles not being straight and only after several months stopped to ask herself, “What’s that about?” Two years later, I came out.
It’s not that I think the Manuel Neuer armband situation is more than superficially similar. For one thing, I no longer need to project onto a celebrity in order to answer questions about my own sexuality. There is still some joy in that, but that is not this joy. This joy is the joy of someone I have amorphously admired coming a little more into focus. This is the joy of witnessing someone else’s justified pettiness on social media. This is the joy of seeing one of the world’s best goalkeepers reaching past greatness for goodness.
And, yes, even now, even for me, there is joy in seeing the rainbow flag in public, in one of the last places I expected to see it. There is joy in not quite knowing why it’s there, but knowing that it means something to the person who chose it.
During Euro 2020, Hungary’s fascist marchers were an extreme case, but when England lost to Italy on penalty kicks in the final, a subsection of the team’s own fans descended into overtly racist social media screeds. None of this is new, nor is it isolated to England, or Hungary, or even international soccer. These incidents highlight the continued need for gestures like Neuer’s armband or an entire team kneeling down. To jaded progressives sitting at home, rightly skeptical of rainbow capitalism or the ability for celebrity gestures to make any kind of meaningful change, these gestures might at first scan hollow. However, if we recognize that racism and homophobia were alive and well not just online this summer, but in the stadiums of Euro 2020, then these gestures have real stakes and therefore real substance.
In one of my favorite YouTube videos, Manuel Neuer stands at the front of his goal box. The ball comes toward him. He hitches it onto his foot and passes it behind to a defender. The eyebrows on the opposing team’s coach climb up to his hairline. He nods in grudging respect. The announcer calls it cute.
Ultimately, I think my joy is the result of that casual grace. Neuer is not seeking credit when he so easily could. When he waves the rainbow armband around during a press conference, he is showing off, yes, but he should. That is the point of solidarity.
Jackie Hedeman (she/her) received her MFA from The Ohio State University and her BA from Princeton University. Her writing has appeared in Autostraddle, The Best American Travel Writing 2017, Electric Literature, Fugue, The Offing, and elsewhere. She is a 2018 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat Fellow and a Charlotte Street Foundation 2019-2021 Studio Resident. With Molly Olguín, she is the co-creator of The Pasithea Powder, a scripted audio drama.
