ROOT PROBLEM ISN’T SANCHEZ’S SALARY

GRASSROOTS football needs better pitches. This, however, has nothing to do with the fact that Alexis Sanchez (below) earns £600,000 a week. Sanchez is a professional footballer, playing for a professional club, and receives the going professional rate for an employee of his ability. He is not the reason your kid’s pitch is waterlogged. The council, the schools, the county football associations, these are the groups that should be coming together to engage with the grassroots and drive better facilities. Not just improved drainage, but superior planning to get the most out of what exists. How many perfectly serviceable school pitches lie dormant every Sunday, while clubs struggle to play, because no one wants to pay the caretaker to open the gates, or hand over the keys to the shed where the nets are kept? The last figures for the Premier League Charitable Fund showed it spent £17.2m on good causes each year. ‘A mile away from Manchester United’s training ground, you’ve got teams that haven’t played for four months,’ said Paul Kirton from Grassroots Football. ‘That can’t be right.’ Indeed. And Ferrari kept producing grand prix cars throughout the years when I couldn’t do my Meccano set. Maybe it wasn’t their

business.