Growing up gay in Vitoria, a city of almost 2 million in south-eastern Brazil, Joao Paulo Silvares never really liked playing football, the country’s national sport and passion. “I was scared to play because it wasn’t somewhere I felt comfortable,” Silvares, 34, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “In Brazil, I think that it’s a bit of a homophobic sport because the common curse words that are used are things like ‘faggot’, ‘little fag’. And if you’re a teenager, a kid who’s gay, you end up withdrawing from that environment.” But when Silvares came across Futeboys FC, a gay football team, in Sao Paulo last year, it helped him discover a love for the sport adored by the nation.