Greed is real virus

ELITE SHUN ‘ RELATIVES’

IN A PERIOD when we are being asked to spend more time with our families, it is clear the footballing one has never been more divided.

One chief executive of a Championship club insists the concept of our national sport being one big community is nothing short of a ‘ nonsensical myth’.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson might stand accused of killing football with supporters unlikely to be able to return to matches until next March at the earliest due to the spike in Covid- 19 cases.

But the possible death sentence imposed has also exposed a sport riddled with selfishness and greed.

Johnson has inadvertently posed some damning questions of the financial structure and morals of the game.

Instead of providing the answers, all football seems capable of doing is begging help from the man who’s asked them in the first place, in the shape of a £ 1bn bailout. We need to distance like never before, but football is taking such measures to the extreme as it battles a virus of its own.

A self- serving one which is destroying the entire pyramid and leaving entire communities at risk.

Financial help might be on the way from the Premier League but it comes with conditions at a time when the flow of cash from top to bottom hasn’t happened.

In a damning assessment, the club executive, who asked not to be named, said: “Clubs have to be compensated for their loss of gate receipts. Whether this is from the Government or Premier League.

“There has to be a redistribution of wealth.

“A Premier League club gets more than £ 100m for finishing bottom of the table but what do Football League clubs get? The Premier League gets £ 3bn from TV money, so why can’t £ 250m of this be given to EFL clubs to help them survive.

“We’ve not had a single penny from the Premier League since the Covid- 19 crisis began and most clubs will go bust this season without owner support.

“How can people sit there watching top- flight clubs sign multi- million pound deals for players, knowing those lower down the ladder are going to the wall?

“Big clubs don’t give a s*** about us. Those people who claim ‘ football is one big family’ are talking nonsense.

“It’s a myth. Some want to believe it but most don’t care about anyone but themselves.

“It will take a big club, say someone like Derby or Nottingham Forest, to go bust before something serious is done, but by then it will be too late.”