Walker has a duty to both his club and his country
ACCORDING to a recent survey, 82 per cent of adults said that they had not left their home during the coronavirus lockdown or only left for the permitted reasons in the seven days before they were asked.
Whether you take the positive of four out of every five people obeying lockdown rules or the negative of one in five admitting to breaking them, what it does show is that Kyle Walker is far from alone.
The City defender has been caught out by The Sun this week, who tracked him travelling to his sister’s house in Sheffield and getting a hug from her before going on to his parents’ house and finally back home.
It comes just over a month after the same newspaper wrote that he had held a party at his home during lockdown, a day before posting a public message urging everyone to stay in their homes. Where Walker was sorry in April, he was unapologetic on Friday.
Posting a lengthy message on Twitter, he spoke of feeling harassed and that his health and his family’s health was being impacted by it.
“At what point does mental health get taken into consideration, an illness which affects every sufferer differently?” he wrote.
City are also treating the two incidents very differently.
An internal disciplinary procedure is ongoing for the first offence, yet there was far more sympathy for the second and no further action will be taken against the player by the Blues for it.
There is a part of the club statement on his previous offence though that should not be ignored, even if he is to face no additional punishment.
It reads: “Footballers are global role models, and our staff and players have been working to support the incredible efforts of the NHS and other key workers in fighting the effects of the COVID-19 Coronavirus, in any way we can. “Kyle’s actions in this matter have directly contravened these efforts.”
If it is more understandable for a human being struggling to go and see their family, it is still fundamentally against what all human beings in the UK have been told to do.
Footballers are public figures just as politicians and their advisors are, so it matters more if Walker breaks the rules just as it does when government scientist Neil Ferguson does.
If it didn’t, then there would be no point in getting Kevin de Bruyne and Steph Houghton to work with Greater Manchester Police and tell people to stay at home, or co-ordinate players to spread the message.
Going against that does contradict all of the good work - and there is an awful lot of it - that City are doing to help support the battle against coronavirus in the Manchester area.
Everybody makes mistakes, with varying degrees of sympathy ased on the individual circumstances.
However, even if Walker is backed over this instance he should still be reminded that however human he feels, he will still be seen and judged as an elite footballer for his ability and willingness to follow the same rules as (nearly) everybody else.
Footballers are public figures just as politicians and their advisors are
Simon Bajkowski