With the Government’s announcement that the lock-down, quite rightly, will continue in the U.K. for at least 3 more weeks a resumption of professional football in the foreseeable future is looking more remote. Have the events of the last week clarified the F.A. Premier League (F.A.P.L.) and its individual Clubs’ and players’ responses to the financial needs of the rest of the football pyramid, and the charitable needs of the country in general and N.H.S. in particular?
Regarding the E.F.L. (English Football League) and National League Clubs the F.A.P.L.’s promised £125million does not appear to be “new money”, but an advance of the so-called “solidarity payment” that the F.A.P.L. gives each year in the autumn to these lower-league Clubs. So those in the National League’s North and South divisions may get about £30,000 each, well better than nothing, but regarded by some as not a lot.
From the beginning of the lock-down and cessation of professional football there have been a variety of reported charitable responses by individual Clubs, their Directors and owners, Managers, and players. For example: Eddie Howe Manager of Bournemouth F C volunteered for a temporary salary reduction; Wilfrid Zaha of Crystal Palace and his business partner have given over their 50 London rental properties to key workers; Roman Abramovich still owner of Chelsea F C offered the 72 rooms of the Millenia Hotel to NHS staff similarly; and Marcus Rashford of Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur’s Dele Alli are separately involved in school breakfast and free meals schemes. That club have also reversed their decision to reduce non-playing staff’s wages by 20% on the Government furlough scheme, and at the London Academy of Excellence Tottenham, part sponsored by Spurs, their laser cutters and 3D printers are being used to produce Personal Protective Equipment (P.P.E.) for the local N.H.S..
As for the N.H.S. at large, whether the Minister of Health’s remark about rich footballers taking a pay cut and playing their part was right or not, Liverpool FC’s Jordan Henderson’s well intentioned players’ fund for N.H.S. charities will have to go some way to beat former Army Captain Tom Moore’s £18 million! The soon to be 100 year old (more than the combined ages of most F.A.P.L.’s front 3 or even back 4) World War 2 veteran who served in the brutal Burma Campaign has just completed one hundred 25 metre laps of his garden, that’s 2,500 metres, walking with a wheeled Zimmer frame. He has captured the imagination of ordinary people who have responded with unimaginable generosity.
Follow the Government advice, keep safe, stay well, Andrew at PLDs.