QPR midfielder Joey Barton says players must lead change in attitude towards homosexuality in football

The QPR midfielder was speaking in a BBC Three documentary which will air on Monday night, and said that if current players could set a more tolerant example the Premier League will have an openly gay player within the next 10 years.

"There is no doubt in my mind that in the next 10 years we have an openly gay footballer," Barton said on the programme Britain's Gay Footballers.

"My only fear is that certain managers and individuals within the game will discriminate against people.

"These archaic figures think if they had a gay footballer, they would have all kinds of shenanigans going on in the dressing room.

"That's not the case. As I say it's more fool them and their lack of social awareness and intelligence.

"I pity them a little bit that they don't have enough about them — enough self-confidence or enough self-worth — to be able to say, 'Know what? This is a relevant subject and this is my opinion on it'.

"And I think it's important that the legacy this generation of players leaves is a generation of players that help not only change the game for the better and change the teams they played in, but also change the culture and the society of the football clubs they played at."

Barton also revealed that that his own uncle is homosexual, and said that he sympathised with his struggle to become open aboput his sexuality:

"It's a subject quite close to my heart because my dad's youngest brother, the youngest of my uncles, is gay. And I didn't know for a long, long time.

"He thought because of the society that we were brought up in, which was quite working class, that it would be frowned upon or that we would disown him.

"So for a lot of years he was in turmoil and was resenting himself for the fact he had these feelings.

"I was like, 'I love you for you — not for the fact that you are straight or bisexual or all different manner of things. I love you because you're you.' "

Barton was speaking to Amal Fashanu, daughter of former Wilmbledon and Aston Villa striker John, whose brother Justin commited suicide in 1998, eight years after coming out as gay in the press.

John Fashanu disowned his brother at the time, but his daughter has become a campaigner against homophobia in football.

In the programme she confronts her father over the comments he made in 1990, that he would not be comfortable taking off his clothes in a dressing room in front of Justin, and that other players would say the same

But Fashanu defends himself, saying: "We are all selfish here, Justin was selfish, because to come out and not care, or worry about anybody else, and tell the world you're gay at a time when it was so hostile..."

When asked if he would do things differently now an emotional Fashanu said: "Mistakes were made."

"We've cried nearly two decades for Justin - it's enough."