When Zander Murray talked publicly and honestly about his (not always good) experiences of playing football in Scotland, it should have been a turning point for the game: for the people who run it, the people who play it, and the people who watch it. But Zander has now announced he’s retiring and the turning point is still nowhere in sight. Even now, the change we need is distant, and receding.

I say “receding” for good reason: when Zander leaves the game, the number of openly gay senior footballers in Scotland will go from one to none. In fact, in the entire world, there are only six out gay footballers which is extraordinary given there are around 120,000 professionals. Perhaps every one of them is heterosexual except for the six who’ve said they’re gay. And perhaps every man who plays football in Scotland is heterosexual except for Zander. It seems unlikely, no?

When he first talked about his sexuality last year, the hope was that Zander’s openness would encourage others and in some ways, I’m surprised it didn’t. The coverage Zander got in the media was 100% positive, he led a Pride march, his football career seemed to go from strength to strength and he started to forge a secondary career as a public speaker. So: pretty good.

But it’s the small details that matter and in Zander’s case they’re less positive. He still gets abuse on social media (where real attitudes show their face). And even though his colleagues were supportive, he says his next step might be to coach for the women’s game because it’s more inclusive. “I have to accept,” he said, “that I am never going to be my true authentic self in a dressing room full of straight men.”

I’m tempted to say the problem is coming from the top, and it is. The retired English footballer Thomas Beattie, one of the few who’s come out as gay, says there’s still an assumption among managers that a gay player would be disruptive, which is the same approach as the brigadier-generals who used to assume homosexual soldiers would cause the army to lose wars because it was a bit too gay.

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However, the problem also lurks at the other end of the game, among the players and fans. Gary Neville once said the dressing room could be an evil place, driven by peer pressure, and another problem is the assumptions fans accept without question. Have you ever thought, for example, that if a man is gay, he probably can’t kick a ball? What would you call that? Banter?

None of this is easily fixable, but then again when you think of the remarkable change on gay marriage in Ireland, it’s obvious even entrenched views can be changed with a shove in the right direction. Zander is doing a bit of that himself with his work with youth teams and in schools and in time I’m sure it will work: dinosaurs go extinct eventually.

But I suspect the real change will only happen when managers start to tell their players it matters. Thomas Beattie has told how, when he first signed as a youth professional with Hull, the senior players took him to a strip club as an initiation, the assumption being that he was a man and a footballer and was therefore heterosexual.

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No one wants to be a fun-kill here, but it’s assumptions like that one which the managers will have to tackle. When a new man joins the team, do not assume they’re straight; create an atmosphere in which he can talk openly; and tell your players to go easy on the banter. There will be managers who’ll find this awkward; and there’ll be others who assume homophobia isn’t an issue so they don’t need to do anything. But they do, and they should.

Will it change soon? Last year, when Zander made his announcement, I might have said yes, but with his retiral, it feels like we might be retreating further back in to the strange, dark times. Thomas Beattie said football fans shouldn’t fear a gay player wearing their team's shirt, they should fear the days, months, and years when they aren’t. Because the longer it goes on, the more football looks like an aberration. A throwback. A weird echo of how things used to be. With luck, the next Zander will change it.