This 17-year-old boy is the first gay male professional footballer to publicly come out since Justin Fashanu in 1990.
Jake Daniels is a professional player for Blackpool FC and during an interview with Sky Sports News, the came out as gay and said he’d had “amazing support” from his teammates after telling them about his sexuality.
Jake said he felt ready to be himself after “such a long time of lying” about his identity, and added: “For a long time I’ve thought I would have to hide my truth because I wanted to be, and now I am, a professional footballer. I asked myself if I should wait until I’ve retired to come out. No other player in the professional game here is out.”
Surely it is sad to think that this young guy should have had to wait untile retirement to finally live his life and stop hiding who he really was. Coming out is surely not always easy, but it helps to get away the “stress” of pretending to be someone you are not: Jake came out first to his mum and sister – whom he lives with – and then he came out to his team-members, and about this he said: “Now I am just confident and happy to be myself finally. [ … ] Everyone has been so supportive and so proud of me and it just shows what a bond we have as a team and everyone is like a family to each other.”
Coming out also has an impact on the quality of your sport-performances, Jake said, and added: “The day after I told my mum and sister, we played Accrington [in an under-18s fixture] and I scored four goals, so it just shows how much of a weight off the shoulders and what a massive relief it was”.
Jake also told media how sad it was when for hiding who he really was, he also pretended to be dating girlfriends for the medias.
Blackpool forward Jake Daniels speaks exclusively to @SkySportsNews on becoming the UK's first male professional footballer to come out publicly as gay since Justin Fashanu.
Read more: https://t.co/ZzGEehYrB6 pic.twitter.com/Kk3bTdrfnp
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 16, 2022
Jake Daniels joins another professional footballer, Josh Cavallo from Australia, and this for sure will make an impact on the world of football, a sport that is apparently seen as being only for “real men”, full of toxic masculinity, where homosexuality seems to be a great sin.
Congratulations Jake!!
