Jake Daniels: Why Blackpool player's decision to come out as gay matters

Aimee Lewis, CNN

Updated 1020 GMT (1820 HKT) May 17, 2022

Jake Daniels has recently broken into the first team at Blackpool, a club in English football's second tier.

(CNN)It shouldn't matter. But it does.

When 17-year-old Jake Danielspublicly came out as a gay on Monday, phones pinged as the UK's media raced to push out news alerts. This is a big story. In less than 24 hours, the young footballer has become a household name; written about on the front pages, discussed on morning television, mentioned countless times on social media, and praised by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. «I've known my whole life that I'm gay, and I now feel that I'm ready to come out and be myself,» the English footballer said in his statement.Until Monday, Adelaide United's Josh Cavallo was the only current openly gay top-flight male professional footballer in the world. Read More17-year-old is first active UK professional footballer to come out as gay in decadesDaniels is the first professional male player to come out as gay in the UK in the last 30 years, says the British LGBTQ advocacy group Stonewall. Justin Fashanu was the first and, until now, only active male professional footballer in the UK to speak publicly about being a gay man. That was 32 years ago. Fashanu played on for seven years but, aged 37, he took his own life. Daniels' courage should not be taken lightly. Men's football has struggled to keep pace with the rest of society and, sadly, in 2022, the game in the UK needed a trailblazer and a teenager who only made his first-team debut for Blackpool two weeks ago is it. «I am ready to be myself,» said Daniels in his statement, before adding it was a «step into the unknown.»Justin Fashanu publicly came out as gay in 1992.