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Leatherhead FC manager Luke Tuffs: ‘I’m showing young people you can be gay and a success’
The most prominent gay manager in English men’s football on dressing-room banter and the people at the top of the game
“In years gone by I think I might have struggled to get the information I wanted over to people because they probably wouldn’t have accepted me,” Luke Tuffs says. “They would have thought: ‘Why is a gay person telling me what to do on a football pitch?’ I genuinely think that would have been a thing 20, even 10 years ago. Now, certainly not.”
Tuffs is an openly gay man who is also a football manager. This is something still so uncommon in the British game that Tuffs, whose Leatherhead team are bottom of the Isthmian Premier League in England’s seventh tier, is the most prominent example. This is not a good situation and the challenges men face to be open about their sexuality in elite football remain stubbornly difficult to overcome. Fortunately for Tuffs, he is happy to take on the mantle of role model. He also has enough charisma and passion to power a set of floodlights.
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