Resum
Throughout history, football has been the largest sport for men in Norway, as it is today. But now, it is also the largest organized female sport in our country. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the results from a study about
female and male football players and their coaches’ attitudes towards the football players’ sexualities. The empirical data presented are based on in-depth interviews with 22 players (11 of each sex) and eight coaches (two women and six
men) in men’s and women’s elite football in Norway. The concept hegemonic masculinity of Connell and Bourdieu’s terms symbolic power and doxa are used in trying to explain the results. Men and women, and lesbians and gays develop different habitus, because of their different experiences within Norwegian elite
football. The study shows that the heteronormativity still is strong in men’s elite football. When you are a man and plays football, it is taken for granted that you are heterosexual. For women, it is the opposite, and it is assumed that you are a lesbian.