WHEN the time came for successful professional footballers to be properly recompensed for entertaining millions it was long overdue. For more than a century these gifted young men helped make other people rich, among them the senior executives of sportswear brands, television companies and providers of lifestyle accoutrements. For the rest of us they provide memories that keep for life.

The window for earning seriously good money begins to shut quite rapidly as soon as a footballer signs his first professional contract. Thereafter, poor form, injuries and his 30th birthday all conspire to reduce his income. There is no mercy in football for any young man no longer deemed to be capable of making fat profits .

Their career options and earning potential after football are limited. Such is the competition for a professional contract and the physical and psychological demands of keeping it that a young footballer is not permitted to gain any other qualifications or skills. He needs to be earning a massive amount of money and hope that when he loses form or picks up an injury his face and body will still fit. The vast majority are then left to hope that what they managed to earn for those brief few years will take them all the way through to the age when other people retire.

We feel that the millions a few of them make for a few years gives us the right to hold them to a higher moral standard. If they are ever caught on social media displaying anything less than the discipline of a Tibetan monk, we flay them. We rarely think of them as three-dimensional human beings and dismiss them as stupid and ill-educated. They, in turn, find that retreating behind such a façade can provide a defence from smart-arsed football journalists, some of whom possess only the bare rudiments of literacy themselves.

The overwhelming majority of professional footballers still come from working class and/or disadvantaged backgrounds and many support causes and charities connected with these communities throughout their careers. Much of this work goes unreported because, well … it doesn’t sell as many newspapers or gain as many likes as a clumsy post on Twitter or a picture of them emerging tousy and sparkling from the local Club Tropical.

And so I hope some of them today will show their appreciation of Marcus Rashford. The 22-year-old Manchester United and England striker, brought up one of five children, has single-handedly forced the UK Government to continue to provide free school meal vouchers to disadvantaged school pupils in England and Wales over the summer. Predictably, the Labour Party has tried to muscle in on the credit. All that’s done is made them look pathetic.

READ MORE: Marcus Rashford: Labour take credit for school meal U-turn

The eloquence and compassion of his letter to politicians arguing his case bears repeating here. He wrote: “Political affiliations aside, can we not all agree that no child should be going hungry?

“As a black man from a low-income family in Wythenshawe, Manchester, I could have been just another statistic. Instead, due to the selfless actions of my mum, my family, my neighbours, and my coaches, the only stats I'm associated with are goals, appearances and caps.

“I would be doing myself, my family and my community an injustice if I didn't stand here today with my voice and my platform and ask you for help. Ten years ago, I would have been one of those children, and you would never have heard my voice and seen my determination to become part of the solution. Food poverty in England is a pandemic that could span generations if we don't course correct now.”

Rashford also spoke of how the system works against children from backgrounds such as his and prevents them from fulfilling their natural gifts. For many of these children a regular, hot meal during term time can be their only form of daily nourishment. He knows how poverty forms patterns that recur throughout a child’s life without early and meaningful intervention.

READ MORE: Tory Grant Shapps stuns viewers with comment on free school meals

Coronavirus, as we knew it would, has disproportionately affected poor neighbourhoods. The infection and death rates are two and three times worse in these places than in affluent neighbourhoods. Unemployment and loss of income will also be much worse in these places. It will become harder for these households to feed their children this summer.

The social and economic consequences of coronavirus will be with us for several years and they’ll hang around much longer in the communities least able to protect themselves. And if it’s right to extend the food voucher scheme for pupils this summer then it would be right to establish it every summer.

Marcus Rashford is a credit to his family and the school and community that helped to nurture him. Manchester United and England should be proud of him too.