Jake Daniels, the first footballer to declare himself gay in Europe since 1990: "I don't want to lie anymore"

“It has been a long time lying.

Every day of my life I have thought about how and when to do it, but I feel that the time has come to tell it: I am gay.

With these words Jake Daniels (Bispham, England; 17 years old) started the interview this Monday on

, the most followed sports television in the United Kingdom.

The young Blackpool striker has become the first active professional footballer to make his homosexuality public since 1990, when Justin Fashanu, also English, did the same in an interview with

The

In a statement released by Blackpool after the interview, Daniels added: “I've known I was gay all my life, but now I feel like I'm ready to come out and be myself.

I don't want to lie anymore, it's suffering."

After scoring 30 goals with the youth team this season, Daniels made his debut on May 7 with Blackpool's first team, with whom he signed his first professional contract in February, at the age of 17.

Three days after his debut against Peterborough in the Championship —English second division—, when he had not yet made his sexual status public, Daniels signed a sponsorship contract with Adidas.

Now, after a week that he will never forget in terms of sport, the young English striker firmly faces the most important announcement of his short career: “It is a step into the unknown.

I am aware that there will be a reaction to this and that it will be partly homophobic, perhaps in some stadium or on social networks.

I become an easy target.”

Of the tens of thousands of professional footballers playing under UEFA regulations, Daniels is the first to come out as gay in 32 years.

Rubén Serrano, an expert journalist in the LGTBI+ perspective and author of

(Today's Topics, 2020), believes that this void is due to the masculine and "extremely macho" nature of the beautiful game.

“Football is a world in which manliness is still emphasized to indicate superiority.

It exudes masculinity on all four sides and it is the patriarchal business par excellence, ”he assures EL PAÍS by phone.

Unlike Fashanu, who made it public out of fear of being discovered, already in the final stretch of his career, Daniels has come out of the closet at the same time that he debuted as a professional, something that Serrano sees as a double value: "He shows a enormous honesty.

These announcements are usually given when the protagonist is already established by his talent and his worth.

In those cases, he doesn't bother us as a society, we see him as something passable, so to speak, because we already know the talent behind the person.

But announcing it as Daniels, who has done it at the starting point, is very revealing."

Hours after Monday's interview on

, Gary Neville and Jaime Carragher, former Manchester United and Liverpool players and teammates on the English team, celebrated the importance of the news on the same network: "We have been in many locker rooms and I can't imagine how difficult this must have been for Jake [Daniels].

It is a very important day for him, for his family and for English football history.”

Daniels's is not the first case of homosexuality in the major European leagues, but it is the first since 1990 that occurs when the protagonist is still active.

Olivier Rouyer, a French league footballer during the 1970s and 1980s, and later a coach, publicly acknowledged that he was gay in 2008, almost two decades after his withdrawal.

Thomas Hitzlsperger, a 52-time Germany international, made his sexual status public in 2014, a year after hanging up his boots.

Justin Fashanu, with the English under-21 team, with whom he played eleven games.Peter Robinson - EMPICS (EL PAÍS)

The last case so far was that of Josh Cavallo, an Australian Adelaide United footballer, who came out of the closet in October last year.

For Rubén Serrano, the taboo of homosexuality in football is still too great to rely on a wave of new cases after Daniels' statement: "We are in a more open society than in 1990, when Fashanu took the step, but the crumbs of hate are still there.

That this is news in 2022 is inconsistent with the reality in which we live.

In addition, it is a very, very repetitive conversation, which shows how stuck we are in certain aspects and the brutal taboo that masculinity in football continues to generate.

An example of this occurred this Saturday, when, according to

, Idrissa Gueye, a Senegalese soccer player for Paris Saint-Germain, refused to play with his team in Montpellier due to the rainbow color that his team wore on the bibs of the shirt —a campaign extended to all the teams in the French league this day—.

The Parisian club did not call him up for the match alleging "personal reasons".

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on