State of the Nation – Football: The big issues still need tackling in 2021

Admittedly, that is a technicality. Macclesfield Town kicked off the year in League Two but were relegated before going to the wall. But even for only one club to go out of business in this traumatic year was a minor miracle we should be thankful for. Many are not out of the woods.

Twenty-two men kicking a bag of wind around matters, and not just to fans.

Keeping some supporters away from their footballing communities for nine months has harmed their mental health as well as their club’s finances but football is so much more than a release.

When the Government showed indifference to children on free school meals during holidays, the opposition was not led from inside either house of Parliament, but by Marcus Rashford. Whilst Matt Hancock was singling footballers out for not doing their bit, Jordan Henderson and fellow Premier League captains including Sheffield’s Billy Sharp and Harry Maguire were quietly setting up a charity. Meanwhile, clubs up and down the country – not, by any means, just the rich – were using their foundations to do vital philanthropic work.

For 2020 to have been of any value to football, it needs to be the year where it not just realised the value of supporters, but actually backed it up with actions, and the terribly skewed redistribution of money began to be reset.

The financial gulf between the Football League and Premier League, an abyss Sheffield United end the year staring into, has never been more important. When the proverbial hit the fan, the Government was not prepared to help Football League clubs as it had to with so many other businesses. Not unreasonably, it argued there was enough money swilling around.

The Premier League, bastions of greed-is-good morality since 1992, crossed the road and spent £1.62bn on summer transfer fees. The next highest, Italy’s Serie A, spent £686.47m. Having agreed to let them complete 2019-20 on condition the millions saved were shared around, the Government was reluctant to enforce it.

Eventually, having initially just brought jam forward to today that was due tomorrow, a £250m rescue package was agreed, though with hefty strings attached.

The Premier League clubs were concerned about throwing money at sometimes appallingly-run Championship clubs but the put-it-all-on-red mindset is largely a product of giving parachute payments – “evil”, says Football League chairman Rick Parry – to soften the dangerous fall from the top flight, instead of narrowing the gulf. Fans of irony will note Parry was a founding father of the Premier League, formed to ensure the other 72 clubs got a much smaller share of the pot.

The financial crisis brought a salary cap – perhaps not the best-designed one, admittedly – to stop mindless League One and Two spending but Championship wages remain unrestrained.

Two big issues from 2019 remain unaddressed.

In December, 2019, Martin Peters’s death made it even more difficult for football to turn a blind eye to dementia. In 2020, we lost former Manchester United and Middlesbrough midfielder Nobby Stiles and Leeds United legend Jack Charlton, whose brother, Sir Bobby, was revealed to be suffering with dementia too. That is now half England’s World Cup-winning outfielders. Still there seems to be a lukewarm attitude towards funding research. It is probably less about selfishness, more what they might find.

The game is more prepared to fight racism, but the boos for players taking the knee – a gesture whose adoption in English football was spearheaded by Sharp and his Sheffield United team-mate David McGoldrick – when fans were allowed back at Millwall, Colchester United and Cambridge United suggests it slid depressingly backwards.

Forget the morals – but only for a second – why would any fan want to close off so much talent because of skin colour? Ours is a game for everyone and the sooner that is reflected in boardrooms and dugouts, the better.

The reluctance of too many to give an inch on this season’s truncated fixture list could have implications for this summer’s European Championships. Particularly if fans are allowed back, football really needs a celebration, but so many leading lights could be injured or worn out.

At least the helter-skelter fixture list has restored some of the beautiful unpredictability that is English football’s hallmark.

What will happen on the field is hard to call in 2021. Changes off the field are no more certain, but very important.

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