Pioneer Jake Daniels' impact on football one year after coming out as gay
At 5pm on May 16, 2022, then 17-year-old Blackpool striker Jake Daniels bravely released a statement that would irreversibly thrust him into the public eye.
In it Daniels announced that he was gay, becoming the first active professional British footballer to publicly come out for more than 30 years. It was a seismic moment for the LGBT+ community, one which continues to face discrimination and abuse within the sport.
The impact of Daniels' decision to share his sexuality with the world cannot be overstated. Here was a teenager, courageously putting himself forward in a bid to break down barriers in a sport and culture which is still tackling its own issues with homophobic slurs from the terraces. The community he is part of finally had an English footballer to look up to as a role model.
The scale of the effect of Daniels' coming out is something that has not been lost on FootballvHomophobia, the campaign group leading the charge for football's LGBT+ community. Campaign lead Lou Englefield has revealed the pace of progress has increased thanks to Daniels. But she believes there also needs to be a reflection on what Daniels' decision to come out represents.
Speaking exclusively to Mirror Football, she said: "It’s been huge. It’s had a positive impact on our work and particularly the work we do educating young footballers. Now, there is somebody who is completely relatable to young footballers in academies.
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Daniels became the first openly gay active footballer since Justin Fashanu when he came out"We can highlight him in the work we do around homophobic language, creating an inclusive environment and standing up, the impact of being an active ally. There’s been hugely positive outcomes there.
"On another level, football is a very fast moving space so what we’ve also seen is almost ‘football’s moved on’. I’ve unfortunately seen people saying ‘we haven’t got an out gay footballer in the Premier League ’. Yet last year we hadn’t got one out in any league.
"One of the things I think that is fantastic about Jake coming out is that he did it at a really young age. And in reality, if a footballer was going to come out, it makes absolute sense for it to be a young person, a young man in the men’s game because of the changes we’re seeing. He’s hugely, incredibly powerful for people."
Any discussion of the LGBT+ community's relationship with football has long been gripped by talk of when the first footballer since Justin Fashanu would come out. Now that has happened, Englefield believes it reflects changing attitudes in the professional game.
"We're no longer talking about a hypothetical situation or a hypothetical person. Certainly for us, we’re no longer drawing on the experiences of players outside the UK when we’re talking about our educational work," she added.
"It’s really important because young people want to identify with other people like them. So having a footballer from the UK, a young footballer from the UK is just hugely impactful. A colleague of mine was talking about how a few months ago she was doing a workshop with an academy group.
Daniels made his debut for Blackpool just before coming out"They were doing lots of interactive exercises and then she showed a clip of Jake’s coming out interview and she said you could hear a pin drop in the room because these young players were just listening, they were just taking it all in.
"And I think that’s a huge change, a real difference. A lot of work has been put in place over a number of years and I think all of those bodies came together to support Jake and that’s been really good to see."
But it is not just within football that the impact of Daniels' coming out is being felt. Leading LGBT+ charity Stonewall believes that the wider community has also benefited.
Stonewall's Sports Engagement Manager Erin Williams (she/they) told Mirror Football: "As a wider community it's done a few things. Firstly, to have the representation of somebody who is like us, who is one of us, who has thrived and succeeded within a sport that a lot of LGBT adults especially don't see representation in.
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"To see him thriving in men's football is amazing to see and is a kind of a statement against all the bullying that happens of 'you can't kick a football, you must be gay'. Actually no, clearly gay men can be amazing at football.
"Jake is also the perfect example of the beauty of coming out, and coming out in a safe environment. He scored four goals after he told his mum and his sister, if his mum and his sister had reacted badly, would that have happened?
He has since become a hero for the LGBT+ community (Twitter/Jake Daniels)"I think there's the perfect example of what the wider community can use as 'this is what happens when you support us'. Being able to see young people thriving, it shows we're heading in the right direction.
"Finally, I have colleagues and friends who in no way, shape or form are football fans, but their dad is. So it's helping to bridge the gap between two communities which are wrongly but traditionally seen as being very different."
Williams met Daniels after his coming out and was left overawed by the striker's maturity. And she believes that as well as being someone for young people to look up to, Daniels is proof of how far the community has come.
"Football's an interesting one, because if you look at women's football there's loads of out players. So there's been this interesting tension where for some LGBT people of some genders football has been this attractive thing where they can express their queerness," Williams added.
"Then for other people, it's like 'don't go near it'. It [Daniels coming out] has shown that anybody can be great at football. What has to happen is that acceptance and that support around it.
"Jake did say to me that he really wanted to be a role model for younger people and stand up and help them so they don't go through the mental health problems that he went through. And I told him that I'm double his age and he's inspiring me.
LGBT+ rights charity Stonewall believes that Daniels' coming out was a watershed moment for the whole community"I've been working with young people a lot and you just see the generational energy. A lot of stuff in many ways is going backwards so to see a generation of young people reaping the benefits.
"I'm a millennial, I can't take too much credit for it, but generations before have been working for it and actually this is why we do what we do and this is why they did what they did, so that people like Jake and young queer people can live this life."
While the impact of Daniels' coming out has been felt far and wide, Englefield believes there is more work to do.
"We’re moving in the right direction. Obviously, I think there’s a huge amount of work still to be done to make sure that at the point of a young person at a performance level or a grassroots level where they feel they can be themselves.
"Particularly with young people to feel they can grow up in the game and discover themselves in the game, explore their sexual orientation and their gender identity and that football will be inclusive enough to contain them in that, ensure they can stay in the game and don’t feel they’ve got to leave it.
"You’ve only got to talk to some of the many LGBTQ+ people that I’ve met in football who have felt they’ve had to leave the game when they’ve come out as gay or bi or trans. What we want is for people to be able to continue their personal journey and their football journey hand in hand."
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