Professional footballers are well known for their high salaries and lavish lifestyles. For some players however, behind their celebrity façades is a real force for good.
An example of a footballer who does more than just their job is Marcus Rashford. Since the start of the Covid-19 lockdown back in March he has raised awareness about the need for free school meals for many school children and how this is not being catered for over school holidays and during the lockdown earlier this year. On October 15 he launched a petition titled 'End child food poverty - no child should be going hungry' the aim of which was to increase access to free school meals during the holidays. The petition reached 1 million signatures on Wednesday 28th October.
Harry Kane is also an example of someone who is working for charities. It was announced earlier this year that he is sponsoring Leyton Orient’s shirts for the 2020/21 football season. He has chosen the charity Haven House, based in Woodford, to be a charity beneficiary in this deal, with the Leyton Orient Away shirts to have the Haven House logo. In addition to this 10% of the proceeds of each shirt sale will go to the charities. This will raise awareness for Haven House and the work that it does. The home shirt will have a message thanking the frontline heroes and the third shirt will have a mental health charity.
In conclusion, we can safely say that footballers do bring more benefit to the world than entertainment and some of them do use their influence for good.
