To be fair to our obscenely rich Premier League stars they were, led by Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, already working to play their part in the Covid-19 epidemic fightback when health secretary Matt Hancock called them out for doing nothing. Footballers are easy targets, aren’t they? Even at some lower league clubs, some players trouser £4,000 a week. To earn so much money, they must be very bad people, right?
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? When Wayne Rooney commented that Boris Johnson and the government were doing a bad job with handling Covid-19 – a view I totally share, by the way – his views were ridiculed and he was roundly abused. Clearly a footballer has no right to an opinion but someone in cyberspace has the right to attack him. There’s logic for you.
Hancock spoke for many when he called on footballers to ‘do their bit’, even though privately many were already doing their bit. And yesterday, the #playerstogether initiative was announced where players will collectively donate millions to the #NHStogether charity. For some, though, that’s not enough.
Liverpool’s Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino was attacked for earning huge wages, as if it’s their fault. It isn’t. It’s the madhouse of the Premier League, funded by people like me who subscribe to Sky and BT that have enabled these wages. Whatever they do, they can’t win.
If they collectively give millions of pounds to good causes, there will always be those who say it’s not enough. If they make the donations public, they will be abused for showing off. If they don’t it’s because they’ve probably not donated very much at all.
Manchester Metro Mayor Andy Burnham nailed it in two tweets last night. Burnham, who gives 15% of his salary to fight homelessness in Manchester, said: ‘If only some billionaires had the same amount of class as our footballers,’ adding, ‘And some politicians for that matter.’
I agree with Burnham and yet I have a modicum of respect for some of our politicians who have already ‘done their bit’, people like Dr Rosena Allin-Khan who has gone back to work as an A&E doctor. There may be many more. And that’s just the point. We don’t really know who’s doing what and maybe it’s better that way.
For all I know, tax exile Richard Branson, net worth £6.1 billion, is making huge charitable donations and helping to staff food banks when he’s not begging the UK government for a bail-out for his airline, funded by those who actually do pay their due tax. And Tim Martin, worth over half a billion quid, is surely doing his bit to help. He’d better be given the demographic of many of his customers who fall in the high risk category. Yes, when Matt Hancock is lecturing our footballers and internet users are taking out their faux anger on Wayne Rooney, let’s hope the filthy rich are helping out, too.
Don’t blame the footballers who earn more money than God. It’s the fault of Sky, it’s the fault of the ever-greedy Premier League, it’s the fault of the gutless FA and above all it’s the fault of every single person who pays a subscription to watch football.
