RICHEST CLUBS AND OWNERS MUST DIG DEEPER

MANY on football’s front line deserve enormous praise for rising to the challenge of a global pandemic with impressive generosity. And those with the real money and power, the super-rich individuals and ownership groups in charge of the world’s biggest clubs? Well now, this may come as a shock. But it seems that the elite haven’t been quite so eager to pitch in. Examples? The individual contributions of one highprofile manager and one international striker equate to almost TEN times the joint donation made by two of the richest clubs in the world’s most lucrative league. Another famous footballer, his impoverished childhood so bleak that dinner usually consisted of bread and watered-down milk, has forked out a six-figure sum to a hospital in need. Yet economic powerhouses like Manchester City — owned by an actual sheikh — are content to make piecemeal gestures. Players and coaches past and present, their world view often shaped by first-hand experience of hardship, are making their employers look bad. Pep Guardiola has donated one million Euros to buy medical equipment in his native Catalonia. Yeah, but his employers at City joined forces with Manchester United to muster up £100,000 for a local food bank last week. So there. Robert Lewandowski made a million Euro donation last week, immediately inspiring two of his Bayern Munch teammates to commit half a million each. Belgian international striker Romelu Lukaku, who has written movingly about his mother’s strugglers just to feed him as a growing boy, just handed over 100,000 Euros to a hospital in Milan. Closer to home, it’s believed that Scotland captain Andy Robertson is the man behind last week’s massive donation that kept six Glasgow food banks going. The Liverpool first-team squad have pledged £40,000 to a local food bank. Okay, fine. But Liverpool FC — owned by Fenway Sports Group, valued somewhere north of £4billion — have promised to match that donation. Big of ‘em. Gary Neville and some of his fellow former Manchester United team-mates have made their hotels available to NHS workers free of charge. At no little cost. Yet there are wealthy clubs seeking pats on the back for donating the odd vanload of food parcels to the needy — or graciously deciding not to plunge match-day staff into abject poverty by cutting off their wages. The thinking seems to go that they’ll be applauded for doing the right thing. Well, that might be one of the smug assumptions that doesn’t survive this crisis. People won’t forget who did and didn’t step up to the plate. The richest clubs and owners could provide financial support for every vulnerable person or struggling family within 50 miles of their home ground. And still commit sufficient backing to ensure struggling lower-league sides don’t go to the wall. Drop a billion or two into the pot. You won’t miss it.