Never Forget

When the Covid-19 crisis is over, I hope we will remember the heroes and villains. The heroes are obviously our NHS and care workers, shop and supermarket workers, our armed forces, our frontline emergency services, DWP staff processing a record number of benefit claims and generally everyone who is doing their bit to get us through. Thank you all. But there will be villains too. We should not waste too much time and energy getting angry with the bad guys, but let’s not forget them, either. Allow me to run through a short list:

• ‘Sir’ Richard Branson, worth £6.1 billion, lives on his private island in order to pay as little tax as possible, demanding…er…taxpayers bail out his airline as he furloughs his own staff.
• Mike Ashley, for being a total see you next Tuesday, in general, but for trying to keep his shitty stores open pretending they provided an essential service and risking the health of his zero hour, minimum wage employees.
• Tim Martin, who wanted to keep his Wetherspoon pubs open because they were kept so clean – you cannot be serious! – there was no danger of anyone catching Covid-19 and because he told his staff to go and work for Tesco because he wouldn’t be paying them for now.

Trust me, there are many more dirtbags like these three. Allow me to add to the list the Professional Footballers Association.

The PFA has rejected suggestions that its Premier League members take a 30% pay cut to help protect jobs amid the Covid-19 crisis. Already, some clubs are furloughing often low paid off-the-field staff but the players, according to their union, cannot possibly take a pay cut. The PFA states that a 30% cut to their wages would be “detrimental to our NHS”. This figure would represent a collective wage cut of £500 million and a subsequent loss in tax contributions of more than £200m to the UK government. How very public-spirited of filthy rich professional footballers to demand they cannot possibly take a financial hit because it would hurt the NHS. I mean, really! As Loyd Grossman used to say on Through the Keyhole, let’s look at the evidence.

The average Premier League footballer trousers around £3 million a year, which equates to about £58,000 a week. Many players earn far more than this. Occasional Manchester United footballer Paul Pogba gets a basic salary of circa £300,000 a week, which will be boosted by bonuses and ‘image rights’, so probably nearer half a million quid a week, not counting commercial interests. Of course, the career of a professional footballer can be a very short one and on the basis of these figures, if Pogba was only able to play for another six years, he’d have to struggle by on a sum not unadjacent to £156 million. I think we’d all find having to get by on wages like that and we’d soon end up at the local food bank.

The PFA frets anxiously about our NHS losing £200 million in taxation from footballers, but this figure is peanuts compared to what the government has already spent in dealing with the financial consequences of Covid-19. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has already pledged over £350 billion to bolster the economy and keep the country afloat. The lost £200 million is not just a drop in the ocean, it’s a red herring.

You could argue that the PFA is a trade union and is acting in the interests of its members and it’s an argument that has some merit. After all, the Premier League only exists because people like me pay exorbitant subscriptions to Sky and BT to watch it. It’s our fault, too. As John Nicholson points out in his excellent book Can We have Our Football Back?, if ordinary punters like me cancelled our subscriptions in large numbers, it would have a massive effect on how much Sky and co could get away with charging and the falling income would demand most clubs would have to pay their players more realistic wages. I realise that the debate about Sky subscriptions and the effects on player wages are probably for another day, but it does illustrate the differences between superstar (and some very average) footballers and the woman and man on the Clapham omnibus. The situation where many poorly paid people are being furloughed and many others are living hand to mouth stands in stark contrast to the lives of footballers who on average ‘earn’ £3 million a year.

I know footballers are not all bad, greedy people. There will be a large number of them who are supporting various charities, individuals and in some cases the countries and villages where they come from. So perhaps it’s unfair to tarnish them all with the same brush. But appearances and actions matter, especially when we are supposedly ‘all in it together’. It can’t surely be that some are more in it together than others?

Government cannot compel footballers to take a wage cut and nor should they be able to. But the clunky, crass attitude of the PFA stands in contrast to a country in crisis, in which we love our neighbours and we all do our bit, not least our heroic frontline workers, many of whom would not earn £300,000 in 15 years, never mind in one week.

Although it’s way too late for Messrs Branson, Ashley and Martin to convince us they are what they aren’t, which is to say rounded human beings with a sense of community and moral purpose, it’s not too late for Premier League footballers to emerge from their mansions in gated communities and show they really do care.

The Premier League itself seems to be more concerned about a possible £762 million financially penalty if the football season doesn’t resume, adding that they are worried about losing hundreds of millions of pounds in sponsorship. At a time when thousands of people are losing their lives and millions their jobs, this is particularly jarring and sadly illustrative of the mentality of top flight football. And we really shouldn’t forget when this is all over.