No one can doubt the influence that Marcus Rashford has had both on the pitch for Manchester United, and off the pitch with regard to his campaign to ensure that no child goes hungry.
The striker has rightly been lauded for both, with his lobbying of the Government coming from a position of personal experience.
“Sometimes we didn’t even have a loaf of bread in the house,” his mother, Mel, said in an upcoming documentary, cited by BBC Sport.
“But I wouldn’t tell somebody I was struggling – it was embarrassing.”
Rashford’s humility and maturity in making his point, as well as a certain doggedness in consistently not allowing the Government to wriggle out of any well-constructed arguments, has won him many friends as well as high-profile companies backing his campaign.
“I think in sport you have to have something behind you that is pushing you,” he noted in the documentary, cited by BBC Sport.
“When you come from a place of struggle and pain, a lot of the time it switches and it becomes your drive and motivation.”
Though he’ll receive any awards for his work with the same humility as he’s always shown to this point, arguably the 23-year-old isn’t in it for himself.
Not wanting to see anyone else struggle like his family did is the driver, and until such time as the status quo changes for certain families, we can expect Rashford to be at the forefront of the campaign for change.