Gay hero? Surely there's only one man to herald football's watershed moment... step forward Joey Barton

Could just one footballer please come out and be gay, so everybody can be really cool about it and the sport can get on with its life? Just one, it’s not much to ask surely?



Football is beginning to sound a little desperate with its pleading. Rugby, cricket, they’ve all had their gay watershed moment.



Man of the moment: Joey Barton is a sensitive soul who adds a French twist to his English words



And until football does, too, it will continue to be presumed that the sport has not evolved enough to handle male homosexuality.

(Hope Powell, the manager of England’s women, has been openly gay for years, without comment, yet that does not seem to count.)



The gay pressure group, Stonewall, has called again for football to tackle its ‘culture of fear’, while Anders Lindegaard, the Manchester United goalkeeper, has said that football needs a ‘gay hero’.



So here’s a thought. Joey Barton continues his quest for intellectual and social respectability. Why not come out as gay?



Outspoken: Barton has often found himself at the centre of attention

Instant credibility, instant respect, untouchable by the Football Association or future employers. His past misdeeds mentally reprocessed and explained.



‘Well, of course he put his cigar out in that bloke’s face, Gary. He was a tortured soul, forced to live a lie.’



And imagine the new material. A never-ending treasure trove for Barton’s Twitter feed: Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Lady Bunny.



And, let’s face it, with that new accent, he’s probably halfway there.