DANNY ROSE is not your typical Premier League footballer – he doesn’t do social media, he doesn’t Google himself.

He doesn’t do bland post-match interviews. He doesn’t smile and say "cheese" for the cameras.

He doesn’t speak when he’s told to speak, as part of cosy marketing tie-ups. He doesn’t allow club officials to mute him or "approve" his words.

He is unpolished, immune from the slick marketing which goes with most of his peers as an England international with a top-six club.

He is a Yorkshireman to his core. He talks with disarming honesty and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Rose is the footballer who started talking from the heart and found that he didn’t want to stop.

He has a sharp mind and a blunt way of speaking. And he speaks about many subjects some have considered taboo — such as mental health, racism and money.

And, as a result, Danny Rose matters. He probably matters more than any other current Premier League footballer.

BLUNT, HONEST, DISARMING

Not that it’s a competition but he might matter even more than his brilliant England team-mate, Raheem Sterling, who he will meet in a Champions League quarter-final tonight.

The first time Rose truly spoke his mind in public, in August 2017, it was my privilege to be the journalist he opened up to.

In an interview he requested and was fined heavily by Spurs for giving, Rose issued brutal criticism of his club’s recruitment policy and spoke frankly of his own ambitions.

Some of Rose’s criticisms look unfair in hindsight. Others were accurate.

He is Tottenham’s longest-serving player, yet despite his club’s consistent over-achievement, the 28-year-old still has not won a single medal.

That interview wasn’t truly "important" in the wider sense, but one line from it was key.

“I am opinionated and I might not have long left in football,” said Rose.

“One thing is for sure, for the rest of this career, I will play this game how I want to play it and, while I am not going to disrespect anyone, I am going to voice my opinions.”

Rose has certainly been true to his word.

Before last summer’s World Cup, the FA threw open their doors to the world’s media and made all 23 of Gareth Southgate’s squad available for interview, in a move which earned the governing body deserved plaudits.

There must have been more than a hundred interviews conducted during that hour but England’s reserve left-back gave the only one which mattered.

Without having told Southgate, the FA or even his close friends and family of his intention to do so, Rose opened up to myself and two other newspaper journalists about his mental health.

He spoke of being diagnosed with depression, of having been on medication, of his shock when a beloved uncle — with a sunny disposition and apparently optimistic view of life — had committed suicide and also spoke of his torment at an incident in which a gun was fired at his brother.

Southgate is a huge admirer of Rose, who shares his national manager’s feeling of loving football as a game but not as a business.

Yet there must have been countless people, suffering from depression and struggling for self-esteem, who would have taken huge comfort from hearing a successful and wealthy footballer laying bare how indiscriminate mental illness can be.

Yet even Southgate did not think the timing of Rose’s extraordinary interview was ideal, so close to the World Cup.

And the first thing many people in football said to Rose, after he’d given that interview, was that it might cost him a move to a bigger club and make him less marketable.

That is the attitude he is fighting against in an industry which knows the price of every footballer but often fails to value the human being.

Yet there must have been countless people, suffering from depression and struggling for self-esteem, who would have taken huge comfort from hearing a successful and wealthy footballer laying bare how indiscriminate mental illness can be.

If an England star heading for the World Cup doesn’t feel ashamed or cowed by his mental illness, then why should they?

The other day, Rose — having been the target of sickening monkey chants while representing England in Montenegro — spoke out about racism. And he did so in the best possible way.

He didn’t speak in cliches, with the well-meaning but trite phrases many employ when they discuss racism.

He spoke without a script, with rawness and anger. He spoke in a way which made people genuinely uncomfortable.

And what right do any of us have to feel comfortable, when a man represents his country and cretins seek to dehumanise him?

When we’re angry, we don’t always literally mean every word we say. Sometimes we exaggerate to get a point across.

Rose said that the way football’s authorities fail to deal with racism makes him feel as though he can’t wait to turn his back on the game.

This is a man who has dedicated his life to football. The game is in his blood.

Rose’s uncle, brother and cousin are all past or present professional footballers. The family boast more than 1,000 senior appearances.

So when he talks about having “had enough”, it is meant to convey his anger at the lack of seriousness with which the FA, Uefa and Fifa regard the blight of racism.

Rose said that when supporters are guilty of racism in international matches, their FAs usually get fined less than he’d spend on a night out in London.

When Rose was targeted by racial abuse, as well as stones and other missiles, while playing for England Under-21s in Serbia in 2012, the Serbian FA were fined £65,000.

UNAPOLOGETICALLY ANGRY

So many people read Rose’s words and their first response was to condemn him for suggesting that he might spaff 65 grand in an evening.

Given that Rose’s most decadent nights out tend to be having a couple of pints of beer while watching the darts at Ally Pally, it is clear he is not being literal.

He was being unapologetically angry and was using exaggeration to make a point.

Had Rose been white, many of those same people wouldn’t have made such insulting assumptions about his words.

With some justification, Sterling has railed against the way black footballers have often been portrayed in the media and elsewhere.

But Rose is a prime example of how lazy and misleading the "bling" image attached to black footballers and to young black men in general, tends to be.

Rose is introverted, cussed, stubborn, independently minded and has that ability — in keeping with the Yorkshire stereotype — of not giving too much of a toss what others think of him.

Some have called on Rose to become a spokesman and a figurehead in the crusade against racism — but that kind of role might not suit him.

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It sounds too corporate, too stage-managed.

First and foremost, Rose is a very good footballer still dedicated to his trade, renowned for his 100 per cent commitment in every training session and match.

He first started speaking out, partly out of frustration during a long injury break, after he’d ruptured knee ligaments when in the form of his life in January 2017.

When he voices his opinions, he doesn’t sit back and Google himself and give himself hashtags and congratulate himself for giving "bombshell interviews".

He doesn’t tend to discuss it further, even with those closest to him. He just gets on with his football.

Because Rose doesn’t say things for effect. He says things because they matter.

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