Professional football player Jake Daniels opened up about coming out after his biggest interview with Sky Sports News wherein he expressed: “I’m ready to be myself.”
The 17-year-old English footballer received an overwhelming amount of positive response, including messages of support from Prince William to England captain Harry Kane. Not to mention, his Instagram followers have grown to over 85,000, and he also took part in Adidas’ 2022 Pride campaign.
In a recent interview with Vogue, Daniels shared his reaction after coming out expressing,
“I was like, ‘Jesus Christ.’ I feel like it still hasn’t sunk in.”
Despite the positive response on his coming out, he recalled:
“People were messaging my mum and my sister saying, ‘Your son’s an embarrassment.'”
Thankfully, his agent took over his social media to protect him after the story broke out, but that also meant that he was not seeing the positive reactions.
“Jordan Henderson had messaged me and [my agent] screenshotted it and sent it to me. I was like, ‘Uh! I want to see them all,’” the athlete shared.
He continued,
“Then, obviously, I had the phone call from Elton John. That was crazy. I didn’t know what to say. I was just like, ‘You all right? What do I call ya?’”
Moreover, Daniels expressed his hopes after coming out as gay stating,
“I’ve been inspirational, but that’s not the label I should have. That’s just my life.
I want to push the community to get where it should be, especially in football and all sport. When I did get my Instagram back and I saw some of the messages, it was people’s mums saying, ‘You’ve made my son come out.’ That’s an impact I wanted to have.”
Source: vogue.co.uk
It’s so refreshing to see so many gay sports figures being brave and coming out while still playing.