Has football’s upper echelon lost the battle to keep itself strictly hetero?

The tiny group of mythical creatures such as the phoenix, the unicorn, the yeti and the Loch Ness monster is this week smaller by one, with the supposed discovery by hysterical Spanish tabloids that one of their number - a gay professional footballer - really exists.

Prying photographers reckoned they’d busted Real Madrid midfielder Guti landing a kiss square on the chops of another man outside a Madrid bar, on St Valentine’s day, no less. Such a weight of evidence could only mean one thing - couldn’t it? Well, not if the “man” in question, was, as other reports are saying, Guti’s sister. Hard luck, detectives.