If you look at the ESPN headline "Hector Bellerin reveals anti-gay abuse: It can affect you.", it seems like at least at ESPN they interpreted the interview as a very awkward coming out.
You think?
From my perspective the ESPN headline is accurately describing the type of abuse Bellerin has received rather than describing Bellerin's sexual orientation. Google-search 'le saux homophobia' and you'll find a few similarly-worded headlines. Graeme Le Saux suffered anti-gay abuse for the crimes of reading a newspaper and speaking in fully-formed but uninteresting sentences. The media never assumed this made him homosexual, however.
Apparently, Bellerin was told he 'looked like a lesbian'. I was unaware that all lesbians looked the same. (Or that all homosexuals looked the same. Or that all heterosexuals looked the same. Admittedly, the question of whether all inhabitants of sunderland look alike requires further research.)
My immediate reaction to Bellerin's hair would be, 'you look like another bandwagon-jumper sporting that ghastly topknot style, the popularity of which among young men in general and hipsters in particular is a mystery to me, not least because of its former association with samurai, who were militaristic and believed in a caste system, and I would have thought that if hipsters were as liberal as they posture at being they'd not want to adopt signifiers of such a culture. But hey, maybe we shouldn't expect ideological coherence from hipsters. Perhaps beneath the self-promoting surface they haven't a worthwhile thought in their heads'.
Who'd have thought that insulting a footballer's topknot without drawing lesbians into the subject turns out to be easy as pie? Strange, and surely revealing, then, that others signally failed to manage it.
Note that when I referred to hipsters as though they were a homogeneous group I was being prejudiced too. Fortunately my words are beyond reproach, since hipsters are demonstrably rubbish.