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For the first time, an English Premier soccer game was shown on ESPN's main channel. It was a huge match, with first place on the line between Manchester and Manchester City (City won, 1-0). The game started at 2:30 p.m. EDT on a Monday, meaning there was nothing else going on in sports and ESPN simply would have shown the same SportsCenter weekend highlights for the thousandth time.
But seeing such a "gay game" on a channel reserved for more manly sports like American football and car racing upset a fair number of people with Twitter accounts, who let their homophobia and jingoism fly. Deadspin has an entire rundown of assorted negative comments, but here are the anti-gay ones:
Click image for larger view
For the first time, an English Premier soccer game was shown on ESPN's main channel. It was a huge match, with first place on the line between Manchester and Manchester City (City won, 1-0). The game started at 2:30 p.m. EDT on a Monday, meaning there was nothing else going on in sports and ESPN simply would have shown the same SportsCenter weekend highlights for the thousandth time.
But seeing such a “gay game” on a channel reserved for more manly sports like American football and car racing upset a fair number of people with Twitter accounts, who let their homophobia and jingoism fly. Deadspin has an entire rundown of assorted negative comments, but here are the anti-gay ones:
These tweets bring back memories of a piece we wrote in 2008 — "Americans hate soccer because it's gay" — that still gets comments four years later. I am not sure how soccer is supposed to be "gay" unless some people think all non-Americans are gay.
After posting this on the Outsports Twitter feed, this came in:
Photo: Vincent Kompany (right) of Manchester City celebrates with teammate Pablo Zabaleta after beating Manchester United. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
