Sometimes the simple football banners are the best. With football in lockdown in the spring of 2020, this homemade flag appeared on a street rather than a stadium. It reflected one of the game’s biggest stars and a campaign close to his heart.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, England and Manchester United star Marcus Rashford raised millions for the charity Fareshare UK, helping distribute good quality surplus food to vulnerable households.
In June that year, he also campaigned tirelessly against the government’s decision to not provide free school meal vouchers to vulnerable families during the summer holidays. His campaign was successful and the government was forced into a now-infamous U-turn.
In the aftermath of this victory, local community group Wythenshawe Whispers made the banner to celebrate Rashford and to pay tribute to what a local man had achieved. The banner is in fact a bedsheet, with RASHFORD 1, BORIS 0 sprayed onto it in red and black paint.
The banner was displayed at a ‘Welcome to Wythenshawe’ sign in the town and its picture soon went viral on social media and in the national press.
The banner was briefly stolen from the Wythenshawe sign: after a public appeal on social media, it was returned to its creators and kindly donated to the museum, where it remains on public display within the Match Gallery.
The banner helps tell the story of a footballer using his platform during the pandemic to speak out on important issues such as child poverty.
