You only have to look at the work Mata and Butland do off the pitch to see footballers can be selfless
PETER COATES knows how important Stoke City is to the local community.
He is, after all, that Premier League rarity, a club owner born and brought up within roaring distance of his club.
Coates knows the difficulties that have dogged his area only too well.
He knows a football club can play an important role in maintaining the spirit of an embattled populace, even in a small way.
Coates will approve of his club’s latest initiative, giving away two match tickets and a replica jersey to every seven-year-old in the area. Eight thousand of them. It was launched last week at the Willows School, in Penkhull, a district that was home to Sir Stanley Matthews in later life.
Mark Hughes was there, his usual helpful, smiling, but, essentially, shy self. It was Jack Butland, though, who took centre stage. The kids loved him and he could not have had more time for them.
This is only one example of what footballers do. It just so happened I watched this one and saw the energy and enthusiasm it brought. Throughout the leagues, it happens. Early last month, Martin Richardson, a Peterborough season-ticket holder for 30 years, was in hospital. He was on dialysis and had had his lower leg amputated.
The club got to know of it and Marcus Maddison, one of the club’s key players, took it upon himself to turn up and surprise Martin.
“It was nice to see the joy on his face when I walked in,” Maddison said. “I didn’t know I had that kind of effect on people!” Footballers do have an effect. Witness the smiles on the faces of the seriously ill children and adults who were entertained by Manchester United players at the club’s training ground on Friday. There is a raft of unheralded work that goes on up and down professional football’s pyramid. It does not get the publicity it deserves. Juan Mata feels a duty to help those less fortunate, setting up the Common Goal campaign. He has now been joined by Charlie Daniels and Alfie Mawson in donating one per cent of his wages to football-related DON’T about you, I was quite on forward to football Fans’ groups Christmas Eve. victory after TV might claim a not to move any companies agreed day, but, on this games to that I’m not sure the rare occasion, on behalf of campaign was footballthe majority of watchers. end of Tuesday’s draw. Navas denied him with a decent save, though it was a chance he should have buried.
Kane’s overall performance, was lauded by the English media. Rightly so.
But the contrast with Benzema’s reception is something Kane should consider, if Real Madrid do come calling for him.
There is no finer place to play football – but nowhere are you more harshly judged. charities. Daniels joined Bournemouth, from Leyton Orient, when they were in League One.
“It just seems right that our national sport gives something back to society,” he said.
“If my pledge can help spread the idea of Common Goal, then it will be one of my proudest achievements.”
You sense he means it, and so does Swansea’s Mawson, whose football journey started in non-League, when he talks of helping “transform the lives of the less fortunate”.
More players will join Mata, Daniels and Mawson in the Common Goal initiative, but plenty will not.
Yet many of those who don’t will be doing their own selfless thing.
They don’t deserve lionising for it, nor would they expect it.
But every now and then, it is just worth remembering how footballers can be forces for good.