Marcus Rashford reveals Manchester United youth teammates and coaches didn’t realise he went without food and says it ‘should never be normal for someone to feel like I felt’ in new documentary
- Marcus Rashford, 23, speaks about struggles growing up in new documentary
- Manchester United star says club’s youth coaches didn’t know the situation
- Said he would sometimes go to bed without dinner because there was no food
- Marcus Rashford: Feeding Britain’s Children airs tonight at 7pm on BBC1
Footballer Marcus Rashford reveals how only those closest to him knew that his family sometimes struggled for food when he was growing up in a new documentary.
The Manchester United star, 23, has spoken about how his family did not always have an evening meal on the table, despite his mother Melanie working full-time in a bid to support her children.
He wrote in a letter to Boris Johnson: ‘As a family, we relied on breakfast clubs, free school meals and the kind acts of neighbours… Food banks and soup kitchens were not alien to us.’
In new documentary Marcus Rashford: Feeding Britain’s Children, the footballer explains his Manchester United youth teammates and coaches did not appreciate the full extent of the family’s situation.
Rashford, 23, has spoken about how his family did not always have an evening meal on the table, despite his mother Melanie working full-time in a bid to support her children. He said his youth teammates did not know the extent of his situation. Circled, Rashford as a young player
The player joined the Manchester United academy system at just seven years old.
‘The people closest to me obviously knew the situation that me and my family were going through but things like my teammates, the coaches, they never really quite understood what we were going through,’ he says on the documentary, which airs tonight.
‘There were times when there wasn’t any food there and you’d just go to sleep. It should never be normal for somebody to feel how I felt.’
Rashford and his mother Melanie appeared on BBC Breakfast last week to reveal how sometimes there wasn’t even a loaf of bread in the house.
Footballer Marcus Rashford reveals how only those closest to him knew that his family sometimes struggled for food when he was growing up in a new documentary, pictured
She said: ‘I had three jobs and if I didn’t do that we wouldn’t have been able to cook a pot of food, it’s just a bit difficult.
‘So Marcus is only telling the story from how he sees it and the words he has been saying come from the bottom of his heart.
‘Sometimes it was really bad, I’d rather give the food to the kids than give it to myself, sometimes I didn’t get anything to eat.
‘Sometimes we didn’t even have a loaf of bread in the house, it’s embarrassing to say, but we didn’t.’
Marcus Rashford and his mother Melanie Maynard are interviewed on BBC Breakfast last week
Ms Maynard revealed she would sometimes go without food to ensure her children could eat
Rashford forced a Government U-turn on free school meal vouchers over the summer holidays.
He was awarded an MBE for services to vulnerable children during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester.
Rashford grew up in a £150,000 terraced council house on the tough Northern Moor estate in Wythenshawe, an area of Manchester area where Shameless was filmed.
He has a tattoo of his childhood home just below his heart with a compass above it, with the intention of reminding him of where he has come from.
Now, he earns £200,000-a-week playing in the Premier League for Manchester United.