Aston Villa signing Marcus Rashford may be struggling - but Man Utd star still deserves faith and compassion

There are few football players who can plausibly claim to have made a meaningful, tangible difference to the world at large – but Marcus Rashford is one of them. Back in 2020, when the Conservative government was formulating its response to the coronavirus pandemic, it was Rashford who spoke out and shamed them into instituting a £120m fund to feed underprivileged children who were missing out on free school meals during lockdown. Without his actions, children might have starved.

It is Rashford who has helped to raise an estimated £20m for children living in poverty and his campaigns helped to distribute over 21 million free meals for families below the bread line during some of the toughest economic circumstances imaginable. It was Rashford who was rightly raised up as a national hero for his actions – and Rashford who is now being torn from his pedestal because he isn’t quite as useful on the football pitch any more.

That a man who has done so much to help those who have so little should become the subject of mockery sheds some uncomfortable light on the British public, or at least on the highly vocal minority – one hopes it is a minority – who seem to be finding amusement in his downfall, or who are actively rooting against him solely for footballing reasons, as if those really count when held up against the very real difference he has made to the country. If anyone has earned a dose of compassion, it’s Rashford, not that there should be an entry barrier to being treated with basic respect.

Why Rashford’s struggles shouldn’t be a cause for cruelty

Let’s start with something that should be obvious – outside of Marcus Rashford’s inner circle and those in the dressing room at Old Trafford, nobody really know why the new Aston Villa loanee’s career has spiralled downwards over the past 18 months. There has been rumour and innuendo, assumption and implication, but the actual facts behind his decline remain unclear to all but a select few.

All we know for certain is this – in the 2022/23 season, not so very long ago in the grand scheme of things, Rashford was one of the most dangerous players in the Premier League, scoring 17 goals (his fourth double-figure haul in the top flight) and re-establishing himself in Gareth Southgate’s England team. After that, however, something went wrong. Rashford’s performances fell off a cliff, the goals dried up, and he fell out with successive Manchester United managers amid claims that his effort levels had dipped and scurrilous tabloid stories which suggested he was spending half of his spare time in a nightclub.

Whenever the tabloids dig their teeth into their favoured prey, of course, they tend to find ways to exaggerate habits and behaviours which may make up only a small part of the broader picture. Rashford gets pictured at a nightclub, so that must imply that he’s out drinking as often as he trains. He buys a flashy car, so he must not be focused on his work, and so on. They did it to Raheem Sterling, too, and young Black footballers are a favourite target even when they don’t go toe-to-toe with the conservative political faction that such newspapers mostly support.

Just check out the Daily Mail’s response to Rashford’s move to Villa – or rather, please don’t. They felt the need to publish an article commenting upon his allegedly “rough” and “unhealthy” appearance at an introductory photoshoot, as if his manner of dress and the cut of his hair should be a matter of public concern. The right-wing press seem to delight in taking any chance to take Rashford down a peg, and the number of articles commenting on his form or his alleged failings in training can hardly be called proportionate to the need for them. Given the response to his form of late, their campaign to lower Rashford in public estimation seems to be working, although that could be putting the cart before the horse.

There is a startling lack of fundamental compassion in the coverage of Rashford’s recent struggles, or in the public reaction to them. It calls to mind the way Dele Alli was widely castigated for his own ‘decline’ before he revealed that he had been struggling with both his mental health and an addiction to sleeping pills in a moving interview in July 2023.

Dele, similarly, had been mocked and hounded and judged for years, had been the subject of numerous articles criticising his effort and application, had fallen out with his manager publicly and been made a scapegoat, only for there to be a sudden outpouring of kindness and respect when the root causes of his own travails became public knowledge.

Rashford’s issues may stem from very different places. There is no specific reason to believe that he has any addiction issues or is struggling to deal with historical trauma, and his mental health may well be just fine. There is certainly no good cause to speculate about what difficulties he may or may not be facing in his personal life – but the lesson from Dele’s situation should have been that compassion should be the first order of the day, without the need for harrowing details to be released into the public eye before sympathy pours forth.

None of the following may apply to Rashford, of course - but when someone’s work ethic and professionalism appear to tail off, when their energy levels drop and when they seem to lose interest in their passions, that is often a sign of an underlying mental health issue. This column does not intend to speculate about Rashford’s mental health in particular, merely to observe that a basic level of understanding should be the initial response to anyone’s personal or professional struggles, and perhaps especially when that person has a history of excellence and of demonstrating immense compassion and kindness towards others.

There should still be hope for the second act of Rashford’s career

Rashford didn’t need to ‘get involved in politics’. He could, like just about every other professional athlete and celebrity of any other stripe, have just pressed on with his own life and career, and ignored the actions of the Conservative government during the pandemic. Nobody would have thought less of him. Instead, he stuck his head above the parapet, kept it there, publicly campaigned for the government to continue supporting free meals for struggling children, and made a genuine difference to thousands of families in an incredibly challenging time.

Yet here we are – Rashford is, for one reason or another, at a low ebb of his own, and a large portion of the public response has been mockery and cruelty on social media, the modern-day equivalent of being put in the stocks. Perhaps Rashford is the cause of his own demise, or maybe he isn’t. Perhaps he will get back to his old self, or he might have peaked at 25. That shouldn’t matter, because he is a decent man enduring a difficult time and should be treated with at least a basic level of sympathy and compassion. Whether he ever becomes an effective footballer again should have no bearing.

Of course, the lack of faith that his playing form will swing back upwards is arguably strange in its own right. Rashford was, for several years, a quite brilliant player. He didn’t score 138 games for Manchester United by chance and he wasn’t given his 60 England caps as an act of charity. He was superb, and having stood alongside the best players in the country for several seasons, there is every reason to believe that once he can find some equilibrium, he will hit his stride once more.

Hopefully, Rashford’s career will recover, whether it’s at Villa Park or elsewhere. He has already achieved far more in both his professional and personal life than the vast majority of us, and doesn’t deserve to end up being remembered for his downward spiral rather than for the person and player he was in his prime. But what he deserves most of all is simple kindness, the same as every other person who hits a rough patch in their lives.

There could be some very good reasons that things have gone so wrong for Rashford in the first place, and such commentary as he has become the subject of is only liable to exacerbate such issues if they do indeed exist. But even if they don’t, there is no excuse for barbs, jabs or worse. Perhaps, one day, we’ll learn, and start to treat professional athletes who get stuck in a rut with a degree of simple kindness. We clearly aren’t there yet.