One thing you can be certain of in life is this. When a government is on the brink of a crisis that involves lack of funding, footballers will get it in the neck.

This of course, is because footballers earn extraordinary amounts of money and the elite hate them for that. They also know it is easy to turn footballers into the enemy. There are a lot of jealous people out there, who are easy pickings. Picking on footballers is vintage distraction populism

Footballers Doing Their Bit

The last time I checked, many footballers were more than doing their bit during the coronavirus. Opening hotels and properties to NHS workers, donating money and doing what they can to help. It is not footballers fault the government has got itself into an omnishambles with testing kits, PPE and ventilators.

I can think of countless footballers who are involved in foundations, cancer charities, children’s hospitals and many other youth development projects. They often do this under the radar, not wishing to appear narcissistic.

The relationship footballers have with the establishment has always been strained. It has become more so since they have been earning big money. This of course is, in part at least, historical. It was the working classes who took football from Eton and Harrow and made it professional around 150 years ago, so it is in the DNA of Old Etonians to hate them.

You’d have thought they’d got over it by now but the elite institutions of this country are masters of holding grudges (they hate the NHS as well). They must be absolutely seething when they see these young blokes from council estates living in mansions with a collection of Ferraris on the drive.

How dare trash be allowed such wealth?

Blame Footballers

So, when we hit hard times, it is not their chums in the financial industry who cop the stick. It is young lads who have dedicated every hour of their lives to become footballers. Earning that sort of money is of course, ridiculous, but who would turn it down? Would you?

If footballers are having their income paid to the Cayman Islands, fair enough, give them the stick they deserve. However, most of them are paying tens of thousands of pounds in tax every month. I’d argue they are doing a lot more for the UK than city hedge fund managers with contacts in every tax haven you can think of.

What makes footballers a target, rather than people who broke the banking system comes down to who donates millions of pounds to the conservative party.

I’ll give you a clue. It’s not footballers.

Meanwhile a tory party donor is being lauded for winning a contract to supply ventilators ahead of a company who could make them quicker. That will be the same chap who moved to Malaysia to avoid tax.

He’s a hero, whilst a lad in his twenties who excels at football is a villain, especially if he is black and he has bought his mum a big house. Pathetic, really. Footballers earn obscene amounts of money but I’ll tell you one thing. They didn’t smash the economy to bits then rape it of quantitative easing cash.

We all know who did that, but the government know they can’t slap the hand that feeds them.