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The pursuit of help from the Professional Footballers Association still seems a bleak prospect for families of players who gave joy to so many of us and are living with dementia now.
The family of Chris Nicholl had found the process desperately tough before he died last month. The daughter of Tony Parkes has given up asking the union for help.
The daughter of Mike Lyons was informed that there would be no help if she brought him home from Australia to live near her, on his beloved Merseyside.
The former Manchester United player David May last week described a member of one of his WhatsApp groups having to sell their home to fund dementia care for a former player. Another is being moved to a different care home, because his family can’t afford the costs.
None of these families want a fuss. They’re too busy getting on with the unremitting daily struggle that a dementia diagnosis brings.
The family of former Aston Villa star Chris Nicholl (pictured) tried to get help for him from the Professional Footballers Association before he died last year following a battle with dementia
The daughter of Tony Parkes (above) has given up hope of asking the PFA for help and support
The daughter of former Everton captain Mick Lyons (pictured together in Perth) has been told the 72-year-old will receive no help if he is brought back to the UK from Australia
I’ll never forget Rob Stiles, son of Nobby, detailing to me the devastating little indignities of his mother’s search for help from the PFA - then calling me a day later to ask that certain facts be excluded, to avoid causing offence. What incredible dignity.
In these circumstances, the latest role taken up by Maheta Molango, the PFA chief executive, is unfortunate to say the least.
Molango is to join the board of Sampdoria, though you would need to follow the Italian club’s own media or obscure corners of the Italian sports press to know it. This news, announced by the club last week, comes four months after the PFA said it was giving Molango a £150,000 backdated pay-rise, taking his salary to £650,000, because of the cost-of-living crisis.
It’s been impossible to extract a sense from Italy of how much Molango will earn in the new role and answers to that question are loaded with talk about second-tier Sampdoria not being wealthy and Molango joining because he was a boyhood fan. The PFA say that it is a ‘light touch’ non-executive role from which he will earn ‘basic costs and expenses.’
But the salary is not the point. This highly renumerated union boss, whose post at the PFA has also seen him join the board of the global players’ union FIFPRO, becomes part of the executive function at a club whose players he supposedly represents.
Molango’s PFA predecessor Gordon Taylor certainly had his faults, including a grotesque £2million annual salary, but it’s fair to say that he would have been annihilated for taking a boardroom role at any club.
PFA chief executive Maheta Molango (pictured) will be getting a £150,000 backdated pay-rise. He is also set to join the board at Italian club Sampdoria
Former PFA chief Gordon Taylor (pictured) had a grotesque £2m-a-year salary, but he would have been slammed if he'd have taken a role in the boardroom of a club
The PFA say Molango ‘consulted the PFA’s operational board before taking the role‘ and that if any future conflict of interest presented itself, he would recuse him himself.
But it’s not a good look on the back of that salary hike and the union’s current need to demonstrate that their every working minute is being committed to making up for how dementia among its members was scandalously ignored for so long.
