Marcus Rashford shouldn't feel the need to apologise
Street artist Akse P19 repairs the mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford on the wall of the Coffee House Cafe on Copson Street, Withington, which was vandalised after the England football team lost the UEFA Euro 2021 final.Â
Last summer, as you, Marcus, prepared for the biggest game of your professional life against Italy in the European Championship final, a nation held its breath. How it chose to hold its breath depended on a myriad of factors, varying according to personal preference, from individual levels of patriotism, to love of the game, to how much alcohol and drugs were ingested. Kids waved tiny England flags and had their faces painted with St George's crosses. Lifelong football fans put club rivalries aside and dared to dream of football coming home again. A country, divided by post-Brexit angst and fatigued by the suffocating weight of a global pandemic, was finally coming together as the eyes of the world turned to London.
As you and the team those fans supported limbered up, somewhere in Leicester Square, a grown man, undoubtedly overwhelmed by a wave of Churchillian patriotism, took a pyrotechnic firecracker and shoved it up his arse. Not metaphorically. He literally pulled down his pants and pushed a lit firework up his backside in full view of the world. He was doing this as you were no doubt stretching, or having your muscles rubbed, or listening to your manager Gareth Southgate explain to you and your teammates what beating Italy would mean to the country. To the fans. This fan, the one, who shoved the firework up his arse, later told the Sun newspaper that, like you Marcus, he had his own pre-match ritual to adhere to. In his case it was drinking at least 20 cans of Strongbow while he “banged a load of powder (cocaine)”.Â
He said this very matter-of-factly, as if an athlete describing his pre-race nutritional choices. There were many, many thousands more like the Firecracker Fan, Marcus, but it was only he who shoved the firework where the sun doesn't shine. In his defence, he harmed nobody. Except perhaps, himself. This is important to point out because, while he was planting the flag (so to speak), many of his fellow fans were engaging in random acts of violence and abuse that saw, amongst other things, Harry Maguire’s father hurt, Italian supporters beaten up, and thousands of others having what should have been a memorable evening ruined by thuggery. In that context, Firecracker Fan was arguably unlucky that, because of his anal antics, he became poster boy. At least he believed in something. Believed in it so much he stuck a pyrotechnic up his anus to make his point. Rather than be a passenger to history, he became a player in its drama.
As you prepared for that game Marcus, you were probably unaware of Firecracker Fan, which is a shame really, as, for all his flawed thinking, he did show an audacity and clarity of thought in the fog of his own private war that your team sadly lacked that evening against the Azzurri. Imagine if Southgate was armed with the firecracker footage for his pre-game address, he could have implored you all to seize upon that spirit of instinctive daring, to use his act as metaphor for seizing the day.Â
I digress Marcus. I shouldn't pick on Firecracker Fan. Like I said, he did nobody any harm. I send this to you from a country that last Thursday saw our own cities become battlegrounds, as, much like Wembley Way, that fateful evening, early afternoon mirth and patriotism gave way to alcohol fuelled menace all in the name of a patron saint. So, I - we - are hardly in a position to lecture. The point is though Marcus, that when you, with your God-given talent and incredible philanthropic sense of social justice, chose to explain yourself for (barely) confronting an angry fan who went out of his way to stay behind an hour or so after a game ended last week, all to hurl abuse in your direction, you should remember who it is you’re talking to. You are not apologising to the kids who revere you. Or the parents of those kids. Or the media who give you a fair crack. You are apologising to Firecracker Fan and his fellow foot soldiers of fiendish fandom. You are apologising to the very “fans” who feel you owe them something. Because you play football for the team they support, or don’t support.
Because you earn loads of money. Because you do social media. Because you spend your time outside of football working for just causes. Because you are black.
Confronting those who abuse you is never the problem. Asking them to say it to your face, like you did, is the most human reaction. Though we should never condone violence, decking a coward who choses to abuse you from behind a blanket of security guards would likely earn you more respect from right-minded people. To your credit, you chose not to. Instead, you chose to say sorry to the very bottom-feeders who prey upon your vulnerabilities as a footballer and as a man. To the people who feel like you are somehow their property. Apologising to yourself for feeling the need to apologise at all, really, that’s all you should be apologising for.
Stay well, speak soon.
