GARY NEVILLE has provided the nation with that rarest of occasions, a modern-day footballer making the headlines for striking out against injustice.

And the gesture matters because our society idolises football as nothing else, but you have to search hard to find examples of top-flight professionals who clearly care about what life is like for the vulnerable and are prepared to make a political statement about it.

Footballers give plenty to charity. Didier Drogba, Craig Bellamy and Mesut Ozil are among a host of others who have all contributed significant amounts of time and money to causes they hold dear. Football clubs also conduct outreach work in their communities and are proud to line-up alongside children’s charity Unicef and to back its campaigns — but these actions rarely have political overtones.

Neville has made a more overtly political gesture by offering homeless people the chance to squat in a property he and Ryan Giggs have bought. In addition, he has pledged to help the squatters move on.

Housing is rapidly becoming the major political issue of the day, as Tory policy on social housing, planning regulations and renting further reduces the stock available to the poorest. The net result is that the numbers of homeless are rising.

The situation in Manchester is further exacerbated by the Labour-led council’s decision to fork out £100,000 in legal fees to criminalise people who pitch tents in the city centre.

Neville, who donned Manchester United’s colours on 400 occasions and is now a television pundit and England coach, and Giggs are re-developing Manchester’s historic stock exchange building. But they have confirmed that the 30 people who have made it their home are fine to remain in it until renovation work starts in February.

Neville was contacted by Wesley Hall, a human-rights campaigner for Manchester Angels, on Sunday. Hall asked Neville’s permission for the squatters to stay.

Wesley said:?“What a great guy Gary Neville is. I’m just in shock. He told me he’s always tried to help out homeless people in Manchester, but wanted to do more.

“He knows we’ll look after the building and make proper use of it. This isn’t a long term thing, but we’ll have so much going on in here to help people. It’s exactly what Manchester needs right now.”

Tents have now been erected on the Grade-II listed building’s marble floors and the Manchester Angels, a charity dedicated to supporting the vulnerable, are providing support to help people find employment and long-term accommodation.

The fact footballers rarely tackle political issues matters because they are idolised in a way in which few others are. If your heroes eschew politics prefering to pocket vast sums of cash and keep schtum, then that’s one more way to spread the word that falls silent.

I vividly remember as a 15-year-old learning that Eric Cantona’s favourite authors were the French philosophers Andre Gide, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. This led me to reading books while at Henbury High — not a school renowned as a hotbed of continental existentialism — that otherwise I would probably not have come into contact with.

Coincidentally Eric is another footballer who fits into a left-wing narrative. Just this year he offered to house and feed a Syrian refugee family. He explained: “It is because my maternal grandparents were Spanish republicans who fled Franco by crossing the Pyrenees on foot. That being our story, it certainly played a role.”

Eric made a bid for the French presidential contest in 2012, as a way to highlight social injustices which were “too numerous, too violent and too systematic” and two years prior — perhaps a little over-ambitiously — called on people to start a bank run in order to cripple capitalism. He said: “The revolution is really easy to do these days. What’s the system? The system is built on the power of the banks. So it must be destroyed through the banks… if there are a lot of people withdrawing their money the system collapses.”

To stress that my personal allegiance to Manchester United doesn’t preclude me from highlighting other footballers who have made use of their iconic status to sow seeds of revolutionary potential, former Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler offers another example. He famously celebrated scoring in a European Cup-Winners’ Cup game in 1997 by pulling up his shirt to reveal a T-shirt expressing support for striking Liverpool dockers. Tellingly, Fowler was fined 2,000 Swiss francs for the gesture by Europe’s footballing body Uefa because its regulations “prohibit players from displaying any political logos at matches.” Uefa’s press release said that while the organisation may sympathise with the dockers “a football ground is not the right stage for political demonstrations.”

This is risible in the extreme. Given the rampant commercialisation of the Premiership, where almost every inch of football stadia is given over to sponsorship and the players’ shirts are adorned with logos of every kind — this perfectly illustrates how the corporate world has come to drown out competing voices in what was once considered to be the working-class sport.

Former Liverpool boss Bill Shankly is probably still British football’s most celebrated socialist, along with Brian Clough. Both proudly proclaimed their politics, and explained why it mattered to them and their approach to management.

Shankly said: “The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards.

It’s the way I see football, the way I see life.”

Clough, one time chairman of the Anti-Nazi League, was no stranger to picket lines and in 1972 took his players by bus to Spondon Power Station to back the miners’ strike.

Gordon Butler, NUM official, recollected in 2009: “Several cars and a minibus pulled up. The passenger door opened and out came Brian Clough in his trademark green jumper. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ he asked. I told him I was and he said, ‘I’ve brought some of the Derby County team to join you on the picket line.’

“Then he turned to the players and said, ‘I’m going to show you what these men have to put up with. But the lesson you have to learn is how good football’s going to be to you in comparison with being down the pits with these lads’… The players stayed with us all day. I think Brian Clough was a true socialist at heart. Afterwards he sent us free tickets and we took 30 or 40 people to watch Derby play.”

Nowadays you have to fish abroad to find such stories. One example illustrates how de-politicised England’s “beautiful game” is when compared to Italy, a country in which top clubs openly sport which political persuasion their fans — the Ultras — back. Former Livorno striker Cristiano Lucarelli, currently the head coach of Lega Pro club Pistoiese, talks about his support for communism.

During the early 2000s he was highly sought after, and won the Golden Boot for being La Liga’s top scorer. He rejected several better-paying offers from other clubs, and his goal celebration consisted of a dual clenched-fist salute, a gesture made famous by the Communist Party.

So let’s applaud Gary for taking practical action that supports Manchester’s homeless and hope it signals the rise of a new generation of footballers who offer inspiration on more than just the sporting field.