Common Goal that should encourage these wealthy stars to give something back
WHEN Wayne Rooney was a mere 16-year-old, Clive Tyldesley famously asked us to remember his name.
He was talking to football fans but could just as easily have been tipping off those media commentators who hate to see working-class footballers become wealthy, as Rooney has managed to keep their supplies of moral outrage well-stocked ever since.
His most recent fall from grace involved going on an allday bender and attempting to drive a woman home who wasn’t his wife. As well as public humiliation, a long stay in the doghouse, and a driving ban, Rooney was sentenced to 100 hours in a garden centre working with adults with learning difficulties.
He is now halfway through that sentence and eulogising about it: “I’m really enjoying it, working with these people, helping them with different things. It’s a refreshing place to go and it’s relaxing, and I’ll certainly keep in touch when my hours are over,” he said.
Rooney’s new-found serenity has been evidenced in an Everton shirt, scoring six times in his last five league games. It would be lovely to think the 32-year-old’s rediscovery of appetite and focus is down to the chastening experience of remembering his humble roots and giving something back.
Lovely, as it might inspire him to ring up his old teammate Juan Mata and ask to sign up for his Common Goal charity, which sees one per cent of a football person’s salary go towards giving opportunities to some of the poorest kids in the world.
German and Italian superstars Mats Hummels and Giorgio Chiellini (below) have signed up to the project that uses football for social change across 80 countries, but no one of their stature in the English game has.
Indeed, only Charlie Daniels of Bournemouth, Swansea’s Alfie Mawson, Brighton’s Bruno Saltor, Sunderland’s Duncan Watmore and Leicester’s Kasper Schmeichel have.
Which seems a pitifully low number as the scheme has been going since August, and is strangely lacking in household-name players who could raise not only the most money but Common Goal’s profile. And not just players. If UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin can sign over one per cent of his wages to the cause, what about chief executives, agents and managers?
One per cent of Premier League managers’ combined annual pay-offs alone would probably help build a new community centre in Batley and three in Bangladesh.
To be fair, many footballers have their own preferred charities they give generously to, so perhaps don’t feel the need to join Common Goal.
But that lets off many who don’t, who are too uncaring or unpressured to do what Watmore is doing. Which, in his words, is “just giving back”.
I spoke to someone at a big club who argued that as TV keeps fuelling the growth of wage packets, increasingly alienating players and managers from fans, it is in their interests to be seen giving to good causes.
He spoke of introducing a clause, similar to organ donation, whereby clubs sign up to the “one-per-cent rule”.
Whenever an employee joins on a salary higher than £1million a year, contributions will be taken from their wages and passed on to a chosen cause, unless they decide to opt-out. An option that would not do their brand any favours.
It would mean the next time a player or manager was lambasted by a moral judge for being a grasping, self-obsessed prima donna, they could turn round and ask: “Well, how much are you giving back?”