Who is Josh Cavallo? World’s first openly gay soccer player says he receives ‘multiple’ daily death threats

Josh Cavallo is a professional soccer player and equality champion who plays A-league soccer for Adelaide United FC and has represented the Australian under-20 national team.

According to The Guardian, Cavallo is Australia's first openly gay male player who officially came out in October 2021. While speaking to FIFPRO's Footballers Unfiltered podcast, Cavallo revealed that he has received "multiple death threats" ever since he came out.

"There's multiple, multiple, multiple death threats that come my way daily still. In the world of football, being an openly gay player is a very toxic place. It's something not everyone would be able to handle and go through."

The player revealed that despite the support of his club and coaches, the soccer industry still has a long way to go to accept LGBTQ+ players,

"We're a very, very long way off acceptance in this space. So, these are factors that people will consider in their coming out and they might not be out now, but coming out brings all this attention, it brings all this pressure, brings all this negativity that will affect their game in the long run."

---

Josh Cavallo came out as gay in October 2021

The Australian soccer player, Josh Cavallo took to social media in October 2021, publicly coming out as gay. The player noted that he was "ready to speak about something personal that I'm finally comfortable to talk about in my life."

The player noted,

"I'm a footballer and I'm gay. All I want to do is play football and be treated equally."

At the time, Cavallo had described coming out as "the best move and decision" he had ever made. However, that has not stopped the player from being targeted by the audience and soccer fans.

In January 2022, Josh Cavallo was targeted by homophobic abuse during an A-League Men game. The player noted that he had received abuse from the crowd at the AAMI park and took to Instagram, describing his experience.

Josh Cavallo noted that he's "not going to pretend" that he didn't see or hear the homophobic abuse at the game and mentioned that he was disappointed. He also mentioned that it shouldn't be acceptable and we need to do more to hold the people accountable.

"There are no words to tell you how disappointed I was. As a society, this shows we still face these problems in 2022. This shouldn't be acceptable and we need to do more to hold these people accountable."

He also called out to Instagram for allowing hateful and hurtful messages to be spread on the platform and said that he doesn't want "any child or adult" to receive the messages that he has received.

"To Instagram, I don't want any child or adult to have to receive the hateful and hurtful messages that I've received,"