Submission of Evidence on the Disproportionate Impact of Covid-19 on Grassroots Football: An agenda to protect our game and communities. Submitted to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee

In this submission, we discuss why grassroots football (and particularly the vulnerable communities that rely on it) will be negatively affected by COVID-19. The centrality of football – in terms of the both professional football clubs and grassroots football – to people’s everyday lives has been brought into focus by the pandemic. But, to date, the response by government and the football authorities has privileged the narrow stratum of the elite professional game (i.e. the English Premier League [EPL]) to the detriment of other levels, notably grassroots football. In the short-term, the pandemic is likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on the physical and mental well-being of those adults and children in the most deprived communities in England.