Graeme Le Saux is an English former professional footballer and a television pundit. His full name is Graeme Pierre Le Saux.
He was born on 17th October 1968. He has an Environmental Studies degree from Kingston University. He, later on, dropped his studies to focus on his football career. His love for learning never came to an end, however. He was often seen reading The Guardian and visiting museums in his free time.
He began his career in Jersey, his native place. He signed for Chelsea in 1987 and moved to England. He made his debut in 1989. He played as a left winger initially before transforming to an attacking fullback role for the club.
In 1993, he left Chelsea and joined the newly promoted Blackburn which was built by Jack Walker.
He became the most expensive defender in English footballing history when he made a return to Chelsea for £5 million, in 1997. Before finishing his career, he stayed there for six seasons. He then moved on to Southampton in 2003. In 2005, he announced his retirement from football because of Southampton’s relegation from the Premier League.
He had scored 20 goals from 403 club appearances in his entire club career. He was named as the Professional Footballers’ Association Team of the Year twice, once in 1995 with Blackburn and the second time in 1998 with Chelsea.
He had made 36 senior appearances from 1994 until 2000, as an England International which included starting all four England games at the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France, and scoring one international goal, against Brazil.
After he retired from football, he worked as a pundit at BBC on their Match of the Day 2 television highlights show, as well as on the BBC Radio 5 Live station. Currently, he works as a match analyst and commentator for the U.S.-based NBC Sports Network’s television coverage of the Premier League.
Apart from being a footballer and a pundit, Le Saux is also a trustee of the UK charity Fields in Trust.
Le Saux has also published his autobiography Left Field: A Footballer Apart, which was launched in September 2007.
Currently, he is a non-executive director of RCD Mallorca after the club was bought by American investor Robert Sarver and former NBA player Steve Nash in January 2016.
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Is Graeme Le Saux Gay?
One of the things about Saux that people have always wanted to know is whether he is gay or not. Well, we have a very clear answer to this!
Le Saux is not gay. He is heterosexual. He is married to Mariana Le Saux. The couple has two children.
After he had spent a summer holiday with one of his Chelsea teammates, Ken Monkou, rumors had started circulating that he is homosexual. This rumor circulated throughout his career. This rumor impacted him very negatively and caused a lot of disturbance in his life. He went through a lot of abuse from the opposition fans and even from some of the players. He had also faced a series of taunts with Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler while he was playing for Chelsea against Liverpool on 27 February 1999.
In 2007 in his autobiography, Le Saux openly talked about the abuse he went through because of the rumors that circulated about him. He also accused Chelsea’s assistant manager Gwyn Williams of making homophobic comments toward him.
He went through a lot of abuse because the rumors spread about him didn’t leave him fit enough for the football community. There even have been times when has got into physical fights because he was tired of listening to all the taunts.
He saw being labeled as gay as a potential threat to his career. This was because he had seen coaches rejecting a player if they knew that he was gay. Le Saux has gone through incidents when he was all by himself and had no support from his teammates, officials, or fans.
He was accused of things he didn’t do and there have been many instances where he was all alone fighting his own battles with absolutely no support.
But irrespective of everything, he stood strong and emerged as a very strong and well-known personality whom we all respect today.
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