A crying shame if top-end excess cannot be diverted to help cash-stricken clubs NOTE OF CAUTION

AT the same time as 146 years of Macclesfield Town history was being wound up, Tottenham and Real Madrid were probably haggling over who would pay what percentage of Gareth Bale’s salary.

By less than happy coincidence, the debt that is dragging Macclesfield Town towards extinction is just over £500,000, Bale’s weekly wage.

Meanwhile, Southend United, founded in 1906, is having its umpteenth pint in the last-chance saloon.

A winding- up order has again been adjourned and the club has been given yet another chance to conjure up £493,991 for the taxman.

A day earlier, around 50 miles away, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was being filmed gazing wistfully around the Emirates, the subtitles announcing, “THIS IS WHERE I BELONG. THIS IS MY FAMILY. I WANT TO LEAVE A LEGACY”.

Well, with a minimum of £36million guaranteed over the next three years, the 31-year-old is certainly getting a legacy.

No wonder a club he joined only 32 months ago has become his FAMILY.

These types of contrasts have always been a part of the fabric of professional football.

They might be even more stark now, but they have always been there.

But as Macclesfield Town looks set to join Bury in going to the wall – and many others head in the same direction – there has never been a time when it has felt so important for the gross inequality to be addressed.

Let’s get one thing straight.

Bale’s wages, Aubameyang’s wages, whoever’s wages have nothing to do with lower league clubs being run into the ground by rotten ownership.

Even be fore Covid-19, so many were running at an unsustainable loss that the pandemic will simply be a brutal, coronavirus coup de grace.

According to the pre-eminent expert on foo t b a l l ’s finances, Kieran Maguire, Macclesfield Town lost money in seven out of the last 10 years, accumulating losses of nearly £5million.

That is not Bale’s fault. That is a failure of clubs not

Macclesfield appear doomed while those at the very top continue to prosper regulating themselves and/or the Government not doing it for them. And if clubs get into deep trouble by speculating in a failed bid to move up the ladder, why should those who have managed to do just that whi le staying within their means bail them out?

We get all that. But if English football is to continue to have a proud structure topped by 92 league clubs, representing communities the length and breadth of the country, it cannot just be about the survival of the fittest.

Any solutions will be complex. But can anyone, with the good of the game at his or her heart, feel comfortable with agents taking an annual £260m from Premier League clubs while the likes of Macclesfield Town face extinction?

Could anyone, with the good of the game at heart, object to a small levy on the dizzying transfer fees at the top of the sport being filtered right throughout the pyramid and down to the grassroots?

Could anyone, with the good of the game at heart, now be seriously annoyed if the Government decided the football industry’s finances needed regulation?

Yes, Macclesfield Town’s financial situation has been a car crash of its own doing, but listen to fan Ellie Thomason. She said: “It’s terrible, but it is just so sad because it has been such a huge part of my life since I was five years old and, God, it sounds ridiculous – I know it’s only football at the end of the day – but it is a way of life. It means such a lot to us. I’m trying not to cry thinking about it.”

Only Ellie IS sobbing.

A club going to the wall has been a relatively sporadic occurrence, but as the ramifications of Covid-19 take a grip, Bury and Macclesfield Town could be the start of a grim procession.

And, as Ellie would no doubt tell you, in a game dominated by top- end financial excesses, that truly would be a crying shame.