Gay soccer star Esther González shocks fans with move to anti-gay Saudi Arabia
World Cup and NWSL champion Esther González is leaving a trail of angry LGBTQ and Gotham fans as she goes to Saudi Arabia to play soccer.
Mark
Soccer superstar Esther González left New York’s Gotham FC a month ago to, she said at the time, take care of some family issues in her home country of Spain. She was going to retire from soccer, even if it wouldn’t be forever, as personal matters needed her attention.
She convinced Gotham FC to let her out of her contract, and she headed home.
Now just a month later, González has been announced as a new player for Al-Qadsiah Saudi Women’s Football Club. Yes, in Saudi Arabia, where being gay is illegal.
There have been plenty of athletes who’ve chased the money to go play for the Saudis. A few years ago, Jordan Henderson of England headed to the Middle East to play in the anti-gay country after demonstrating years of support for LGBTQ people. A lot of gay fans were pretty upset, as it felt to many of them like a betrayal.
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The soccer star was feted for speaking up in support of gay and trans people, then pilloried for abandoning his principles. Now he’s left Saudi, reportedly without pay.
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This time, the betrayal being felt is by the Gotham FC fans who watched González walk away to take care of her family in Spain… and are now watching her take said family to a place where homosexuality is illegal.
Various accounts are claiming she has deleted images of her wife and child from Instagram, in preparation for the move to Saudi Arabia. However, there is still at least one of her and her partner from 2021 (at the time of publication). We’ll see how quickly this gets deleted:
Regardless of one photo making the cut (for now), the move is a head-scratcher on some level, to be sure.
Yet the Saudis have made a point of pouring billions of dollars into sports — and attracting talent — in an obvious attempt to normalize the country and its culture and policies in the Western world.
The country’s biggest prize so far? Winning the right to host the FIFA World Cup in 2034. While players like González can make whatever choices she feels are right for herself and her family, FIFA telling gay fans (yet again) that they have to go to a country where they are illegal if they want to watch their favorite sport has been rightly criticized.
Nabbing González is another big prize for the country and its image “makeover.” She was a big part of Gotham FC winning the last two NWSL Championships, and she was a huge contributor to Spain’s 2023 Women’s World Cup title.
To now have a gay athlete join a team in Saudi Arabia — when she was already playing in New York, an extremely LGBTQ-inclusive metro area — is certainly a big statement. It’s a huge boost for the Saudi Women’s Premier League.
Plenty of people are already pouring onto social media to criticize González for the move. It’s understandable on both of these counts — the apparent deception in leaving Gotham FC, and the seeming ignoring of Saudi Arabia’s poor rights record for gay people and women in general.
“Esther González going to play in Saudi Arabia is one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in women’s soccer,” wrote journalist Bruno Miotto. “It wasn’t enough with the strange departure from Gotham for “personal reasons,” now she’s heading to a country that oppresses women and LGBTQIA+ people (of which she is a staunch defender).”
Gay people can be sentenced to capital punishment or incarceration sentences by the country. Seems like an odd choice for a woman who needed to leave to take care of her family.
At the same time… that’s gotta be a lot of cash they offered her. Athletes have a limited amount of time to make a career-worth amount of money. Female team-sport athletes in particular are notoriously paid far less than their male counterparts.
So if chasing a bunch of cash is taking care of her family for González, that’s her choice to be sure. It’s not a choice many other LGBTQ people would likely make, but it’s hers and she’ll have to live with whatever comes next.
She’s left countless fans — in New York and the LGBTQ community — extremely disappointed. And she’ll be hearing from them about it for a while.
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