Game can learn from unity of City players and staff
WELL done, Coventry City.
Football has not had a fair deal in the press lately, it has to be said.
The stupidity of a small portion of professionals from some of the country’s biggest clubs has left a stain of the rest of their hard-working, sensible and isolating colleagues.
But the Sky Blues have made us all very proud.
Mark Robins, Adi Viveash and their players have agreed to a 25 per cent wage deferral (twice that of the cut Arsenal’s high-paid stars could not settle on), unanimously.
The move will protect the shortterm future of the football club during a period where so many of their rivals will struggle to survive over the coming months.
Unanimously. That’s the key word to bear in mind, here. All players were in favour of the decision to sacrifice, for now, a quarter of their livelihood in the name of their employers.
Robins and Viveash, well and truly, have every single player pulling in the same direction and it should never be misunderstood just how hard that is to achieve in a dressing room full of sportsmen.
But why should we be surprised? The way they had played in the weeks before lockdown shown that there was something very special about this Sky Blues side – a
Sky Blues side that probably would already be celebrating promotion to the Championship by now.
That dream now seems a million miles away, but football can learn a lot from the togetherness of Coventry’s players this week.
In a time where the sport seems to be showing itself to be as greedy as ever, maybe football should realise that sacrificing a little of what it has – following a 30-year period of success where it has never been so lucky – is more important than getting playing again.
The Premier League and the Bundesliga now seem to be hellbent on returning to action as soon as possible with reports claiming that the English top flight alone could be set to miss out on nearly £800m in broadcast money alone should they not.
The plan would see games played behind closed doors and broadcast into our living rooms from specially selected stadiums with only 300 staff present and no more than 100 in each section of the stadium at any time. And amongst that 300 will be medical staff, there to assist should a player or official suffer a serious injury and as they sit amongst the 60,000-plus empty seats they may wonder why their presence at this dark time is needed more for a football game than it is needed at a care home or a hospital. The want for football to return is normal, especially with City so close to their first league title since 1967, but the fight to see our sport back on our screens with the world simply not ready right now seems at best distasteful. Football does not realise how lucky it has been over the past three decades and it could learn a lot from the generosity and patience of Coventry City’s players right now.