Alan Shearer, during a long career as a football player and, some might argue, in his second act as a pundit, seemed to make a point of avoiding bold, controversial statements. In post-match interviews his aim – perhaps sensibly, given the British media – appeared to be to defuse the encounter, like it was a bomb that could explode at any moment, and the fastest way to achieve this was to lean heavily on cliche and banalities. Media training for footballers, which became a thing in the 1990s and 2000s, had one guiding principle: do your talking on the pitch.

Marcus Rashford, England centre forward 2.0, takes a rather different approach. Although the 22-year-old was hardly under the radar as a precocious Manchester United star, he now has an appeal far beyond sports fans. In the early days of lockdown – when footballers were being castigated by health secretary Matt Hancock for refusing to immediately take pay cuts – Rashford helped to raise nearly £20m to provide free meals to vulnerable people. The initiative started in Manchester but quickly went nationwide. Rashford spoke eloquently, urgently and with personal resonance, recalling his own experience of growing up in Wythenshawe with a single parent, Melanie, who often struggled to feed her five children.

When it looked as though school dinner vouchers would be stopped during the summer holidays, Rashford stepped it up. In June he wrote an open letter requesting the continuation of the programme, which was published on social media and in many newspapers. Almost immediately he had a call from Boris Johnson and the government backtracked, offering a “Covid summer food fund” for 1.3 million pupils in England worth £120m. Manchester United’s No. 10 one, Downing Street’s No. 10 nil.

But Rashford has not stopped there. Last week he launched a taskforce, in partnership with the charities FareShare and the Food Foundation and several major supermarkets, to end child food poverty in Britain. Again, the message was deeply personal. “I remember the sound of my mum crying herself to sleep to this day, having worked a 14-hour shift, unsure how she was going to make ends meet,” he wrote. “That was my reality.”

Footballers and other sports stars endorsing and supporting charities is nothing new: Shearer, it should be noted, was involved with the NSPCC during his playing days, and has raised large sums subsequently. What is unusual is the unapologetic stridency of Rashford’s message.

And he’s not alone. Early in lockdown the Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson launched #PlayersTogether and raised £1m for NHS charities with an online auction of Premier League shirts. In 2017 Manchester United’s Juan Mata created the Common Goal initiative, which asks footballers to pledge 1% of their salary to charity. So far 160 players and managers have signed up, including Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp, Leicester City’s Kasper Schmeichel and US winger Megan Rapinoe (who has also campaigned forcefully for gay rights and equal pay for women’s football – a measure that was announced this week by the English FA, applying to men’s and women’s match fees and bonuses).

Raheem Sterling of Manchester City, meanwhile, has spoken out widely and loudly about racism in domestic and international football. “[Racism] is the most important thing at this moment in time,” he told Emily Maitlis on BBC’s Newsnight in June in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, “because this is something that is happening for years and years.” When the season restarted, players from all 20 Premier League clubs had the words “Black Lives Matter” on their shirts, though there are now reports that there are no plans to continue the campaign in the new season.

The Black Lives Matter movement has received widespread support from across sports – but also a re-airing of the familiar backlash that athletes should “stick to sport”. (Basketball star LeBron James was told to “shut up and dribble” by Fox News host Laura Ingraham in 2018 after he criticised President Trump.) When the tennis player Naomi Osaka was trolled for her comments on BLM, she responded pithily: “I hate when random people say athletes shouldn’t get involved with politics and just entertain. Firstly, this is a human rights issue. Secondly, what gives you more right to speak than me? By that logic if you work at Ikea you are only allowed to talk about the ‘Grönlid’.”

Almost as long as sport has been played, there have been activists within its ranks. The Nika riots of 532AD in Constantinople, which led to many thousands of deaths and half the city being burned down, were instigated by the emperor Justinian’s refusal to pardon a pair of rival chariot racers. Two of the most celebrated examples of sports protest came from 1960s America: in 1966, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the US military; two years later Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave a Black Power salute on the podium at the 1968 Olympics.

All of these acts would lead to personal hardships for those individuals involved. Ali was banned from boxing, fined $10,000 and sentenced to five years in prison. Carlos and Smith were expelled from the Games and their families received death threats.

As money poured into sport in the 1980s and 1990s, along with outsized sponsorship deals and greater scrutiny of off-field activities, athletes tended to become more tight-lipped. The era can be summed up by four words attributed to the basketball legend Michael Jordan around 1990: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” This was the Nike pitchman’s explanation for failing to back Harvey Gantt, an African-American Democrat running against the incumbent Republican Jesse Helms, an unabashed racist, in North Carolina. Jordan now claims the comment was a joke, but in the Netflix documentary The Last Dance he also conceded: “Was that selfish? Probably. But that’s where my energy was.”

Certainly, there remain risks for any athlete speaking on an issue that’s not next weekend’s match. FareShare, the hunger and food-waste charity, admits it was surprised when Rashford approached them about working on a project. “I would say yes, it was very unexpected,” says Alyson Walsh, commercial manager of FareShare. “It’s certainly something that resonated with Marcus. I don’t claim I know his childhood, his background and the challenges he must have faced. But I recognise this has come from a place of experience for him, and therefore he felt able to shine the spotlight on the issue.” More than just being a figurehead, Rashford actively set out to mobilise his 8.7m Instagram and 3.2m Twitter followers. During the summer he visited food banks and also made a personal (undisclosed) donation to FareShare. “So he was walking the walk and talking the talk,” says Walsh.

Social media is clearly one of the main factors in the resurgence of sports activism. The athlete takes control of their message, and can reach a vast global audience. They have the power, as Rashford did with the food vouchers, to thoroughly embarrass politicians and decision-makers. That doesn’t seem to be Rashford’s goal – he’s studiously apolitical so far – but he clearly has a strategy. In April, he signed with Roc Nation, a management company founded by Jay-Z, which advises him on off-field activities including philanthropy.

For David Goldblatt, sociologist and author most recently of The Age of Football, social media is just one factor in why athletes feel emboldened. “The education and training of many young athletes has changed, especially in football where the old hierarchies of clubs over coaches over senior players over players has broken down,” he says. “Also players just have more money, sooner, with agents who help protect and shield them, which creates confidence to speak out and less fear about the consequences.”

And yet those consequences can be very real. When Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the US national anthem before NFL games in 2016 in protest against racial injustice and police brutality, he was a star quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. By the end of the season, he had no team and he remains unsigned to this day. In March 2018, under pressure from Donald Trump, the NFL instructed teams that they would be fined if players knelt for the anthem.

A similar ostracism is hard to imagine for Rashford. Certainly Goldblatt doesn’t see it ending that way. “If there is any humanity left in the British public,” he says, “then Marcus Rashford will be anointed a national treasure.”