Matt Maher: Crisis threatens to bar way to the top for players
In a week when the debate over Project Restart continued to rage and clubs in various divisions were accused of self-interest, it was left to Harry Kane to provide a reminder football’s community spirit does still exist.
The England skipper joined forces with Leyton Orient in a shirt sponsorship deal which will provide the League Two club with welcome financial support, while also raising money for charity.
While Orient’s home strip next season will carry a message of support for frontline workers tackling the coronavirus pandemic, mental health charity Mind and Haven House Children’s Hospice will have their logos on the club’s two change shirts as part of a deal which will see 10 per cent of the proceeds from each sold go to the cause on the front.
“I was born and brought up only at a couple of miles from Orient’s stadium and I’m really happy to have the opportunity to give back to the club that gave me my first professional start,” said Kane, who scored five goals in 18 appearances for the club while on loan from Tottenham aged 17.
Though he has since blossomed into one of the most feared strikers on the planet Kane has never forgotten his roots.
His career patch, which also included loan spells at Millwall, Norwich and Leicester, is hardly an unfamiliar one, the prospect at the top flight club who cut his teeth with temporary trips to the lower divisions.
There are other Premier League stars for whom the stay was longer but equally as productive.
Kane’s Three Lions team-mate Jamie Vardy is surely the best example, having enjoyed a meteoric rise from non-league to Premier League champion at Leicester.
Villa midfielder Conor Hourihane, meanwhile, can boast the rare achievement of having scored in all four of England’s top divisions, after a career which began at Sunderland’s academy and then took in the depths of League Two with Plymouth, before he climbed back to the top through stops at Barnsley and then Villa.
Hourihane is rightly proud of his journey, yet whether others will be able to take the same route once football emerges from the coronavirus crisis is open to serious question.
Despite the repeated warnings from the likes of Tranmere chairman Mark Palios, there is still no indication of just how the EFL plans to addressing the £200m financial “black hole” league chairman Rick Parry claims will exist by September.
Should the worst predictions come to pass and a host of clubs in Leagues One and Two go out of business, the impact will not be restricted to local communities.
Up to 1,400 EFL players with contracts due to expire at the end of next month will be the first to experience football’s harsh new landscape. Many who fail to find a landing place at clubs with severely reduced budgets risk being lost to the professional game for good. Who is to say the next Vardy will not be among them?
On the same note, would Kane have developed into the same player without his Orient grounding? How many famous careers might have turned differently?
The current crisis has understandably hastened a debate on whether English football can continue to support four professional divisions. Though it might antagonise traditionalists, it is a worthy discussion.
Making a case for a restructure of the pyramid has never been easier and just a few months from now it may come to be regarded as a necessity.
But any decisions taken must be done so on the basis that any sport which wants to remain strong at the top requires a solid base. It is in the interests of every stakeholder in the game to ensure that.
