Football

Editor Matthew Whitehouse on THE FACE cover stars Jack Grealish, Tems, Beabadoobee, and the ecstasy of fandom.

As Manchester City win a fourth Premier League title in five years, we meet the talismanic midfielder with the world at his feet, a Gucci ambassadorship and the kind of megawatt charm that’ll burn through English football for the next decade.

Jack Grealish’s other sporting life: as a teenager, he played Gaelic football for an historic Irish sports club in the Midlands. We went there to meet the coaches who remember the “natural”, and the kids who aspire to be him – even the ones from the Blue side of Birmingham. Well, some of them.

Yesterday, the Blackpool player publicly came out – the first professional player to do so since Justin Fashanu in 1990. While there’s loads more work left to do to tackle homophobia in sport, this is a huge win for the future of football.

Ahead of Saturday’s final, THE FACE went down to Wembley Stadium to ask footie fans one all-important question: what’s wetting your whistle?

There has still not been another openly gay Black footballer since Justin Fashanu. Twenty-four years on from his death, the one thing that resonates most strongly throughout his story is the silence.