Arsenal: Meet Jake Coare, the Arsenal fan making a difference

Mental health problems are rising. But as football fans, we can do something about it. Meet Arsenal fan Jake Coare, who is making a difference by using football and fandom to get people talking about their mental health.

As I sat at my kitchen table waiting to speak to Jake Coare, an Arsenal fan with an interesting story, I was actually a little nervous. It is not every day that you get to speak to someone making such a positive and profound impact in normal life. But that is precisely what Jake is doing, all through his fandom of the club. And yet, many will have never heard his name.

Jake grew up an Arsenal fan despite his Dad being a Spurs fan. That, he told me, was because of his Uncle. Gorging on Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Arsene Wenger, Jake immediately fell in love with the club. But unlike many other fans of the time, his story was quite different.

Jake has Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of Autism. It is defined by the NHS as ‘a developmental disorder characterised by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests.’ Jake has helped grow awareness of the disability through his Gunners fandom. And now he is tackling a new problem: mental health, especially that of men.

As Jake told me, mental health problems are a major issue for young men in the modern era. This is particularly true of football-supporting men, who must pervade the machismo world of football as if they have no feeling or emotion. It is weak to be emotional. Figures released for 2018 heartbreakingly show an increase in the number of suicides across the UK. There were 6,507 males and females who committed suicide last year.

Most pertinently for Jake and football fandom, 4,903 (75%) of those reported suicides were male. That equates to 13.4 men committing suicide every day. It is the biggest killer of males aged under 45. And for Jake himself, these statistics are especially important.

Jake has suffered from depression and anxiety throughout his life. He has dark periods where he does not leave the house, isolates himself from the outside world and hides away from even his closest friends and family. But through all of this, his Arsenal fandom stuck with him, and for Jake, it was a release, a sense of hope (oddly), something that he could cling to.

The Emirates was a safe haven. The 90 minutes of a football match a place for him to express himself, to focus his mind on something, to recognise there is more to life than the trapping fear that depression causes.

This Sunday, when Arsenal host Crystal Palace, Jake, alongside the Samaritans, will host a #WalkandTalk. They will start at Selhurst Park and walk across London to the Emirates in time for the Sunday afternoon fixture between the two sides. People are encouraged to join with them, to walk with them, and to talk about their mental health, all in the hope of raising awareness about the killer that is mental illness.

Jake Coare is an Arsenal fan making a difference. And that is nothing short of wonderful.