{"id":304704,"date":"2026-02-18T18:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/304704\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:55:13","slug":"it-stopped-being-fun-when-gary-speed-died-ex-premier-league-striker-reveals-himself-as-the-secret-footballer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/304704\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It stopped being fun when Gary Speed died\u2019 \u2013 Ex-Premier League striker reveals himself as \u2018The Secret Footballer\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dave<\/p>\n

Dave Kitson<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The late Gary Speed, pictured during his time as manager of Wales<\/p>\n

\"thumbnail:\"thumbnail:<\/p>\n

Former Reading and Stoke striker Dave Kitson has revealed himself as \u2018The Secret Footballer\u2019, saying his anonymous exposes into the modern game \u201cstopped being fun\u201d when Gary Speed died.<\/p>\n

Kitson wrote five books and had a weekly newspaper column during the 2010s under the pseudonym, detailing his frustrations with the game.<\/p>\n

Guessing his identity, which he has now revealed in a YouTube interview, was a passion for fans on the internet, who tried to solve clues.<\/p>\n

Kitson, who also played for Cambridge, Sheffield United and Portsmouth, said: \u201cI am The Secret Footballer. I\u2019ve never said that out loud before. It was an idea that came to me when I wasn\u2019t happy with where football was going and I needed an outlet to express it for my own mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been writing since I was a kid. It\u2019s a passion. As I said, I wanted to be a travel writer. The writing was cathartic. It helped me process what was going on in football.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The late Gary Speed, pictured during his time as manager of Wales<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started as something that wasn\u2019t about naming names. It was about explaining what happens in the industry and why.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would write and leave people to form their own opinions. It was fun for a while, then it bred huge anxiety. I had a career and a big contract. If I\u2019d been outed, I would have been sacked and ostracised. Now everyone has a podcast and an outlet. Back then, it was genuinely new.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt changed football in this country and led to overhauls at the highest levels, which I\u2019m proud of. But the stress and anxiety were immense.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst thing that happened was when I wrote a column about mental health called \u2018Sometimes There\u2019s Darkness Behind the Light\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody talked about mental health in football then. If you spoke about it, you were seen as weak. I said there was a mental health epidemic and I predicted it was only a matter of time before someone took their own life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI submitted it on Friday. It went out Saturday. On Sunday, Gary Speed was found dead. That\u2019s when the Secret Footballer stopped being fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dave Kitson The late Gary Speed, pictured during his time as manager of Wales Former Reading and Stoke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,898,112],"class_list":["post-304704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}