“IT’S A F*CKED UP WORLD IN A LOT OF WAYS BUT THE PROCESS HAS STARTED”

Megan Feringa

“It’s just like, hang on a minute, you know. Can a tulip be anything else but a tulip?” 

At this point, Neville Southall allows himself a chuckle. It is not joyous. More bemused. Softly incredulous. Definitely weary at the fact this conversation about the basic rights of the LGBTQ+ community still insists on being had. 

The 64-year-old Welshman, to be fair, has been holding this court for years. He is one of the most vociferous supporters of society’s most marginalised, with the bonus tag of “ex-football legend”. In media-speak, he is gold dust. 

But the sombre gaze Southall has donned for the last 50 minutes is briefly shattered by this flash of a smile, presumably inspired by the absurd simplicity of it all. Because at this juncture the entire world has been solved for the fifth time over just tonight. 

“It can’t, can it? It just can’t.” The former Wales and Everton goalkeeper shakes his head, a great round thing with thick, silver hair greased back into a curl at the base of his neck. In an unassuming navy popover, he gives off an inescapable air of a mafia boss turned grandad. 

“So why are we asking somebody to be somebody they’re not and can never be? I just don’t get it. I really don’t. And I think sometimes, Jesus Christ,  there are bigger problems, isn’t there? There are bigger problems than people holding hands down the street? It’s not one of the world’s greatest problems, is it?” 

The jury is still out on whether Southall is putting a 21st-century twist on American novelist Gertrude Stein’s famous line “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”. Gut instinct leans towards not. Spend enough time with Southall and you’ll discover he has a simile for everything (this writer’s personal favourite is Twitter’s fetishised refusal to build positive dialogue compared to “two people on a log with a pillow each just smashing the shit out of each other”). 

A flower reference is probably just a coincidence. 

Yet the substance of the sentiments is uncannily identical: a person is who a person is. And while, for some, placing one of football’s greatest-ever goalkeepers on the same profound pedestal as one of the most influential female writers of the last century constitutes a sign of literary insanity, it is impossible to deny that Southall is making the exact same point, just with less lyrical zest. 

On a bitingly cold October night, Southall sits at a dining room table oscillating between a sunken concern to an up-close-and-personal paroxysm of passion inches away from the Zoom screen. 

The conversation begins with a general question regarding the LGBTQ+ community’s plight in wake of a World Cup held in Qatar but dips, almost imperceptibly, into an existential wormhole. Within minutes, we are on a whistle-stop tour of life, reposing the fragility of identity, the greyness of today’s truth, the essence of being human and how the world might, one day, just be a straight-up nice place to exist. 

Buried somewhere in the midst, as so often is the case, is football. 

It is captivating, without the whiplash. Such conversations have become Southall’s calling card, his Twitter account — the password of which he distributes to a bevy of charities and experts for daily takeovers on sex education, transgender rights, homophobia, racism — now a microcosm of this post-football edition of the man. Though, it should be argued, it’s more a microcosm of Southall himself, plainly addressing the state of the world in the same manner he addressed careening shots 40-odd years ago: directly and not fussed about the style points. 

“I’ve always spoken my mind,” says Southall. “It’s got me in plenty of trouble in the past. And I’ve always been incredibly stubborn. So I always try to do what I believe is right, even when it ended up being wrong. And then I say sorry, I thought it was the right thing to do at the time.” 

Southall’s straight-talking candour is refreshing, particularly in light of the song and dance that the world will soon become numb to as a World Cup in Qatar dredges up many of society’s ugliest attributes — homophobia, migrant injustice, human rights abuses, gender inequality, transgender rights — and football, as is now custom, becomes the Ped egg responsible for smoothing out the calluses. 

Southall is no Ped egg. 

“I don’t think we should have gone there [Qatar] in the first place,” Southall says when asked what was meant to be the easy question of if he will watch the World Cup. Of course he will. Like most Wales fans, Southall is acutely aware of the 64-year wait, as well as the sheer un-luck of the Mother To End All Waits being held in a country with abhorrent human rights. He cares about Wales at a World Cup, but it is quickly evident his thoughts are preoccupied more by the context than Gareth Bale’s fitness levels ahead of the group stages. 

“That’s what gets to me,” he says. “Can someone tell me why we’re going there? Are we going there to help Qatar grow football? Well, the stadiums are going to be stripped back after the tournament. Does that mean it’s going to take more people’s lives than those that had the duty of putting them up?

“That’s the biggest thing so far. What is the truth? You can see it in politics, especially with this country now. Is the truth that we’re in a mess? Is the truth that it’s not as bad as it is but everyone is playing a game for their own agendas? I think the biggest crime was Dawn Butler calling Boris Johnson a liar, and she got thrown out for telling the truth in our democracy. 

“The truth is really difficult these days. Unless you see it with your own eyes, it’s very difficult to come across.” 

In Qatar, truth has become a murky exercise in conjecture. Despite assurances from the Qatari government regarding treatment of travelling LGBTQ+ fans and a marketing campaign claiming this World Cup to be “the most inclusive, people-focused edition of the tournament ever held,” alternative versions of the truth continue to erode such promises.

Humans Rights Watch only just announced findings that Qatar Preventive Security Department forces arbitrarily arrested lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and subjected them to ill-treatment in detention centres – including forced conversion therapy sessions for transgender women and beatings — as recently as September. 

The odds of fans stumbling upon that truth while walking to and from hotels to stadiums to ginormous laser-shooting Glastonbury arachnids are low. The number of lives lost (more than 6,500, according to a Guardian report conducted in March) to erect the eight stadiums won’t be etched into their facades. 

“Qatar is going to be a show for the world and they’ll show it in a way that they want to show it,” Southall says. “Will it be the truth? Not 100 per cent. Will it grow the game? It may do. But they have enough money to buy whatever they need, and at the moment, it looks like they’re buying a World Cup. They’re trying to buy acceptance. 

“But surely, acceptance is the one thing that the LGBTQ+ community wants in that country. It’s a typical place where people live in the shadows because they’re afraid, but the country is going for acceptance, and I find that difficult to comprehend.”

Perhaps it is Southall’s persistent concern with quality of life, and his insistence to stray away from his god-like ex-footballer status, but Southall does not come off as jaded, even when he acknowledges football’s swiftly crystallising habit of cosying up to the highest bidder.  

Rather, he sounds like someone with an understanding of the simple, recently obscured essences of society and a passion for wanting to get it there. 

“I think we have to start looking at our own society before we start casting stones at everyone else,” he says. “Society is judged by the way we treat the most vulnerable. And our society is shit at doing it. It just is. But why is it? Why is it that other countries can look after their most vulnerable people better than we can? 

“Most people who are homophobic have got a real problem, not with homophobia but with themselves. They’re scared of themselves.” He shifts gears into playfully sharp ridicule. 

“You know, I’ve never met anyone from the community who had two heads and four arms? Isn’t that a surprise?”

He shakes his head, returning to his previous solicitude.

“We need to build a society that is tolerant of everybody. Not just the people we like or suit us, but for everybody.

“And at the end of the day, what is society for? It’s to be tolerant, but it’s to get on. It’s to help people fulfil their potential.”

We momentarily re-enter the world of football. I’m offered a mental exercise. 

“You imagine you’re a gay man, a footballer, because there might be one going out to the World Cup. Is he going to play to his full potential?”

I shake my head. 

“Right. Because he’s hiding all the time. And if people aren't who they are supposed to be, then they will never reach their full potential. If you can live your life the way you are, you can reach your full potential. If you don’t, then you’re always trying to mask everybody.”

Mention of a theoretical gay footballer inevitably brings up the question of whether a top-level footballer will come out. 

“I think there’s only two ways a footballer is going to come out,” he says, hesitating slightly. 

“One, when we create the right environment. That seems to be a little bit sketchy because the FA don’t talk about it.” By means of example, he points to the fact use of a homophobic slur won’t be met with a sending off on the pitch or a ban off it. 

“The player would have to make loads of in-roads before he came out, but that’s not making him feel comfortable,” he says. “That’s making him do the work.”

The other method is more deflating: a leak from the press. All of which remains subject to the potential media circus and online abuse that would ensue, a premise that very few footballers, if any, Southall says, would relish. 

That is not to say never. Southall believes a top-level footballer will come out eventually, and the ripple effects will be seismic. 

“Our problem is that –” Southall pauses and momentarily purses his lips, before another metaphor invariably comes to mind. “It’s like a crash on a motorway, okay. You drive past it and everybody is interested. The first gay player will be like that. 

“So we have to make seeing gay players on the pitch normal. Because when we have the first gay footballer come out in the Premier League, you look at the natural progression of the people in the world, we’ll then have a transgender player. And it might not be in the Premier League, but it will be in somebody’s academy, somebody’s national team, lower down in the schoolboys, and they’re going to have to decide what they do with them.”

For the transgender community, Southall harbours a particular anticipation. Recent controversial bannings in sport have fired appeals processes into motion, requiring opponents to “show evidence” Southall believes will immediately prove baseless. 

“This is an incredibly fundamental time because it’s the start of a process that is going to define sport,” he says. “People have not seemed to catch onto that. Once it’s a legal challenge, sure it might take 10 years, but you have to start the process. And with sport being as stupid as it is, they think the problem will go away when you ban it and it doesn’t, it becomes an issue that you have to prove. 

“You look at the black players today - they went on a similar journey. The abuse they got was horrendous, it still is. Transgender people haven’t gotten to that point yet because they haven’t been allowed to play the sport. 

“If I’m really honest, it’s going to come down to what a man and a woman is, and we can debate that for God knows how long but then someone has to decide somewhere. Now it’s not a vote winner, so no one is going to give a shit about that so that’s going to be put to the side as much as possible unless it’s an issue that they can make some votes on it.”

Football, it’s posited, could be a place where that vote becomes tangible. Italy’s terraces have long proved infamous for the political heft they yield. Sport, despite a strong contingent believing it should stay within its lane, inevitably strays into the political sphere. The efficacy of supporters’ groups is discussed, dovetailed by the need for a centralised voice as opposed to isolated pockets. 

“The media, the far right, have a real problem,” Southall explains. “They want to divide people, they want to label people and once you label people, it’s easier to divide them.

“Because one of the problems is that there isn’t one voice. If they had one voice – one in England, one in Wales, one in Ireland – and they went to the government and said, listen you, we want this to happen. What do you think would happen? It would get done.”

The theory brings up a simple yet divisive concept: How much responsibility should football really shoulder in issues like this? Is it actually football’s duty to be a conduit to foster tolerance? 

Southall opts for the judicial route: “It’s your choice, isn’t it? It’s your choice as a human to speak out or not speak out.

“That lad Jake Daniels was incredible, and he must’ve had some stick because social media is full of weirdos, but that’s why I think get on the pitch, let people see who you are and after a while they won’t judge you. 

“It’s the same situation with me,” he says. He details how a recent tweet promoting transgender athletes sparked a furious episode of keyboard warrior, a Twitter orthodoxy bemoaned by Southall for its marked reluctance to become an endangered species. “People judge me as a footballer, and people think I’m going to be like I was years ago but I’m not.”

For a man still venerated as a Sondico-donning prophet, the comment is instantly intriguing. 

Google describes Southall as “one of the best goalkeepers of his generation”. Under the “People also ask” header are the questions: Did Neville Southall win the Ballon d’Or? And Was Neville Southall the best in the world? BBC Wales have released a documentary this month about the former binman turned keeper. The books are endless. 

A glance at his Twitter page, however, suggests nothing of the sort, barring a profile picture depicting a young, moustachioed, brown-haired iteration of the man leaning somehow both dejectedly and endearingly against a goalpost. In that sense, he offers a distinct repudiation to the ex-footballer cliche. Is this binary perception what he means? 

Southall begins to speak but then stops himself. His eyes momentarily latch onto something beyond the computer screen. “I don’t know. I think that’s other people’s opinions of me. That’s not how I see me.”

How do you see you? 

“Just me.” A coy grin cracks his stoic demeanour before it’s swept up in a chuckle. 

“That’s it. I don’t have a plan to do this. A plan to do that. I don’t set out to do shit. I started to talk to people in the community, I asked them questions and they were really good and I thought if I’m asking this, then there are other people who are ignorant of this.

“So I thought well, if I can get these two transgender people to take over my Twitter, then there might be more people who come to understand it like me, become educated. Not only that, hopefully they can make a safe space for other people to come out and to ask questions. 

“Because one of the things that happens is if you’re new at anything, somebody has to help you. Or you need help. So, it’s where you get that practical help. What’s the point of me talking about transgender people? I know fuck all. 

“There’s enough people in the world that talk shit about things they don’t know about. I use myself as a bridge, and if I can give them that bridge to stand on and shout, then great. 

“And that’s one of the things - we’re labelling them already. These people. Why can’t we just say people? Humans? They’re no different from me and you. There’s nothing different between us besides what we’re attracted to. Surely, that’s a better world, isn’t it?”

As he speaks the last sentence, Southall’s near-elegiac modesty shifts to a note of evangelical zeal. For now, he has had enough of condemning the inadequacies of powerful society (“We always have these negative conversations”). The World Cup won’t provide the crescendo where those conversations become a far-off anachronism, but it presents the latest flashpoint for these issues to collide in real life.

“And then maybe it will be a bit like Iran, where people are cutting their hair. Maybe they will go out into the street and hold hands. Maybe there will be somebody brave enough to come out.  Then what’s to stop everyone from coming out in the streets? Are they going to lock them all up? No, they can’t. And they can’t be seen to be beating them up either, because this is their showpiece.

“And it could trigger something nice in that country for the people on the ground, the real people of Qatar. It’ll take a long time. But life changes, the planet changes. It’s a fucked up world in a lot of ways, and I think what we can do on a personal level is do the best you can in your daily life to support other people. Be as kind as you can with other people, be as tolerant as you can with other people.”

He leans forward and offers a wry smile, as if behoved with a secret. 

“I am sorta half convinced, you know, that in a few years we won’t be having this conversation. The kids, the ones I’ve been teaching in schools in the last few years, don’t have the hangups. They just go: And? By the time they’re 14, they make their decisions not based on ingrained hostility. They just go, okay yeah whatever. 

“I was talking to someone the other day and they said I don’t care really, sex is sex. A kid.” Southall’s laugh, this time, is contagiously spirited. “It’s an attitude, and they have that different attitude. Mainly because they see a lot more of it earlier, but they don’t have that colonial view of sex where you have to do it on a Sunday morning with the curtains closed. 

“They’re a bit freer and easier in their thinking. Which is what tolerance is.”

A spark of mischief flashes across Southall’s face when he is passed the final question: whether Wales tends to exude that type of mentality. 

“Well yeah, we have bigger things to hate. We hate the English.” It’s unclear how much the jibe is rooted in jest, but Southall gathers the conversation before any supposition can grow legs. 

“Most people wherever you go in the world mostly don’t give a shit, but there's a small section of society that tries to force their views on people. 

“Wales is a good country because they say, just crack on. Get on with it. That’s why when Wales go away – the abuse, the crowds, the fighting, we don’t have all that stuff. At the Ukraine game, it was great. There was applause in the ground, in the end they gave Ukraine a standing ovation. So we are tolerant, but then we should be tolerant.” 

At this point, Southall glances at the clock. It’s time for tea. The Everton-versus-Newcastle match I promised to allow him to catch is now well into its bleak second-half. Before logging off, he adds: “There are some big changes in sport coming, and I’m really excited in some ways because the process has started. And it’s going to really annoy people that have such a horrible view of everybody.”

This article originally appeared in issue #8 of Alternative Wales. You can purchase a copy here.