Players are NOT greedy, they want to help needy.. so here’s a great idea.. send their tax direct to NHS
IT was always premature to throw Premier League footballers under a bus on the mistaken assumption they are all greedy.
For a couple of days, it seemed to be open season on players in the top flight, where the average wage is £61,000 a week (roughly £3million a year).
They were under fire from all and sundry – including a Health Secretary (Matt Hancock, right), who can’t even organise mass testing for his NHS staff to protect them from the coronavirus – for not volunteering to take wage cuts.
Now it has emerged that Premier League captains have held a meeting to discuss a uniform, charitable approach.
Manchester United players, at the suggestion of skipper Harry Maguire, have agreed to divert 30 per cent of their wages into a fund for local hospitals and health services.
And Premier League clubs have agreed unanimously to consult their players about possible wage reductions or deferrals.
Of course, nobody wants to see non-playing staff at clubs laid off or furloughed because cash flow has dried up completely in the pandemic crisis. And everybody applauds the example set by Barcelona, where everyone – from Lionel Messi down – has taken a 70 per cent pay cut for the next four months.
The word is that it was Messi and the players themselves who drove that initiative. Now who’s selfish and greedy?
My experience of professional football dressing rooms tells me that Whatsapp group messages between players would have been flying around this week, asking how they can help to save jobs among non-football staff at their clubs.
A lot of players have already set up their own charitable foundations. Many of them do unseen work in their communities, like visiting sick children in hospitals, but they don’t shout it from the rooftops.
It has emerged that captains at Premier League clubs have already held discussions about accepting wage cuts or deferrals to help fellow employees.
I’m talking about staff with whom they have daily contact at the training ground, people who are part of the fabric of the club, as well as matchday workers in the catering department, laundry, ticket office, or programme sellers and car park attendants.
We have to be a bit patient. My hunch is that players will make a grand gesture, and are only deciding whether to announce it either as individual clubs or as a collective show of unity.
If people are saying a chunk of their wages should help the NHS, former Stoke and Republic of Ireland winger Jon Walters has come up with a good idea.
The average Premier League player earns £3m a year, and 45 per cent of their wages goes straight to the Government in tax, so why can’t the Government redirect that money to the NHS?
If there are 20 top-flight clubs, with 25 players named in each Premier League squad earning £61,000 a week on average, that would be worth £700m a year to the NHS. You could build a couple of hospitals with that kind of money.
As Walters asks, is that a better deal than players taking wage cuts and the money staying with their clubs?
According to audited research, Premier League clubs and players paid £3.3billion in tax in 201617, and the football industry generates 100,000 jobs in the economy. So, instead of politicians getting on their high horses and telling footballers to forsake big chunks of their salaries, perhaps the Government should make sure football’s contribution to our tax revenues goes to where it is needed most in a time of national emergency.
Footballers are only paid what clubs are prepared to pay them. A lot of players come from poor backgrounds and look after their parents, brothers, sisters and friends.
As I said, many of them plough their earnings into worthy causes. Manchester United striker Odion Ighalo built an orphanage in his native Nigeria, while Vincent Kompany gave the proceeds from his testimonial to charities for the homeless.
Dig deeper and you’ll find the number of footballers doing good deeds runs into hundreds.
There are some fat cats in big business whose companies are worth billions – and yet they are asking for the taxpayer to help bail them out in the coronavirus crisis.
Why are people picking on football? Are there no millionaires, or wealthy individuals, in other sports or big businesses?
And where do you draw the line for well-paid jobs? What is the number?
If, in a week or two, players are dragging their heels about taking wage cuts, I might take a different view. But any player who refuses to join in a major charitable gesture would be singled out in his dressing room and it would be held against him.
When there is a crisis and jobs and livelihoods are on the line, I am confident football will contribute its fair share towards the relief effort.
‘We have a Health Secretary who can’t organise mass testing for NHS staff’