Gay footballer Jake Daniels, 18, on ‘soulmate’ partner, 46, who slid into DMs after coming out
He is the only publicly gay footballer in the whole of the English Football League
Blackpool FC’s Jake Daniels has detailed how his now partner was one of over 20,000 people who DM’d him after he came out at the age of 17.
Jake, 18, announced his sexuality during an interview with Sky Sports back in May 2022. This made him the first EFL footballer to come out as publicly gay in 32 years, since Justin Fashanu in 1990.
One year on, Jake is living his best life out and proud.
He has now shared the way he met his boyfriend Mark, 46. During an appearance on Rylan Clark’s new podcast ‘How to Be a Man’, he said Mark was one of the thousands who congratulated him on social media.
“I couldn’t be more happy” – Jake Daniels
“I came out and had my Instagram, my Twitter taken off me, so I didn’t see anything.
“When I had my Instagram back, I had 20,000 message requests or something ridiculous like that, I’d never seen that in my life.”
He went on: “There was one day, I was about to get on a train, and I went on my message requests just to have a gander and the top message was from my [now] partner, just congratulating me.
“I had a sneaky look on his Instagram, and I was like, ‘Alright!’ Dropped a message back and said, ‘Thank you so much,’ – and at the end asked something like ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’ I knew what my motive was!”
The pair then got chatting, FaceTimed and met a few days later in Blackpool. “We’ve been together ever since,” Jake added.
“If I’d gone to the World Cup [in Qatar], I wouldn’t feel safe”
He went on to dub his partner as “definitely his soulmate” and expressed how he “couldn’t be more happy”.
The footballer reflected on how he was concerned opening up would put future transfer chances at risk at clubs such as Newcastle.
The Premier League club are owned by Saudi Arabia, a country where same-sex sexual activity is illegal.
“If I’d gone to the World Cup [in Qatar], I wouldn’t feel safe,” he added. In Qatar, it is illegal to be homosexual, and LGBTQ+ people routinely face harassment and abuse
In his original interview last year, he said he was “probably five or six years old when I knew I was gay. So it’s been a long time that I have been living with the lie.”