Marcus Rashford is on a mission to end child poverty. And the
England forward is not the only sports star with a message
Alan Shearer, during a long career as a
Football player and, some might argue, in his second act as a pundit, seemed to make a point of avoiding bold, controversial statements. In post-match interviews his aim – perhaps sensibly, given the
British media – appeared to be to defuse the encounter, like it was a
bomb that could explode at any moment, and the fastest way to achieve this was to lean heavily on cliche and banalities. Media training for footballers, which became a thing in the 1990s and 2000s, had one guiding principle: do your talking on the pitch.
Marcus Rashford, England centre forward 2.0, takes a rather different approach. Although the 22-year-old was hardly under the radar as a precocious
Manchester United star, he now has an appeal far beyond sports fans. In the early days of lockdown – when footballers were being castigated by health secretary Matt Hancock for refusing to immediately take pay cuts – Rashford helped to raise nearly £20m to provide free meals to vulnerable people. The initiative started in Manchester but quickly went nationwide. Rashford spoke eloquently, urgently and with personal resonance, recalling his own experience of growing up in Wythenshawe with a single parent, Melanie, who often struggled to feed her five children.