Bachmann: We’re years ahead of men’s game in welcoming gay players

Chelsea striker says stars’ openness about sexuality makes for better bond with fans, writes Molly McElwee

Amoment captured at the World Cup in France in June flipped the usual narrative in women’s football, in showing the game – at least in one way – to be light years ahead of the men’s. Denmark striker Pernille Harder leaned over the stands at the Parc des Princes to kiss her girlfriend, Sweden’s Magda Eriksson, who had just helped her team to the quarter-finals.

Chelsea’s Ramona Bachmann remembers seeing the photograph online a few hours later. She is herself in an openly gay relationship with a fellow footballer, compatriot and West

Ham striker Alisha Lehmann. Bachmann says the now-famous image helped reinforce part of what she believes the game stands for.

“It’s obviously amazing because what everyone tries to do is just be ourselves, and not to hide things, trying to show it’s normal for us in women’s football,” she says of her sexuality. “We try and bring that into the world.”

While Bachmann, 28, did not play at this World Cup for Switzerland, the 2015 tournament in Canada was her own coming-out moment. There, on football’s biggest stage, she publicly declared her relationship with her then-girlfriend. She shrugs at the memory, saying it was not planned but just the natural order of events.

“I just behaved normal, I think the media saw us kiss or something and they started to ask questions,” she says. “I just answered like I would talk to my family, no big deal. It had a really big impact in Switzerland, me being open with it.”

ITV reported there were at least 41 female players or coaches at this year’s World Cup who were openly gay, including Golden Boot winner Megan Rapinoe. In the men’s edition in 2018 there were none, and Bachmann thinks we are “still quite far away” from having an out gay player in the top tiers of men’s football in the UK. It being much more commonplace in the women’s game is part of why fans find the game so accessible, Bachmann says, including her 120,000 Instagram followers.

“I feel like in this part we’re really, really a big step ahead of the men’s, and hopefully it’s one way to promote our sport as well. I think that’s why our fans feel like we’re closer to them. They have access to us, meeting us and signing pictures. We don’t have