There's been scarcely a mention on here of something very important happening to football at the moment. Over the last year - starting with Rashford - footballers have opted to put the sport that makes them a living into a bigger context. 20 years ago it would have been unthinkable that a professional player would dare to criticise a member of the cabinet much less take on their policies and force change.
I would like to lift what Owen Jones said in today's paper:
For most of the nation’s under-40s – the generations known as millennials and zoomers – Tory Britain represents a double-pronged onslaught on their economic security and deeply held social values. When Marcus Rashford – a “23-year-old black man from Withington and Wythenshawe”, in his own words – shamed the government into feeding hundreds of thousands of children, he was leading a rebellion on behalf of that most voiceless demographic, the young working class. Since 2010, when the Conservatives came to power with the help of the Liberal Democrats, 800,000 children in working households have been driven below the breadline; however momentarily, they were handed one of the nation’s loudest megaphones. When the England team took the knee, they affirmed the value of the lives of Black people in a nation whose government has cynically fanned racism for electoral ends, up to and including constructing a hostile environment that deported Windrush-generation Britons from their own country.
Should players stay out of politics?
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