England national football team manager Gareth Southgate says taking pay cut to help FA a 'no-brainer'

England manager Gareth Southgate has said it was an easy decision to accept a 30 percent wage cut to help the Football Association (FA) mitigate the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

File image of Gareth Southgate. AP

Football was suspended in March due to the coronavirus outbreak and England’s friendlies against Italy, Denmark, Romania and Austria were cancelled. Euro 2020 was also pushed back by a year.

The FA said the lack of international matches and domestic cup games would cost it 100 million pounds ($125.42 million) and Southgate was among the senior figures to take wage cuts for three months starting in April.

“Firstly, I can’t fulfil the whole part of my job at the moment,” the 49-year-old told the Times. “Although I have taken up other responsibilities in this period that didn’t feel quite right.

“The second part is we are different to a club — I would be the highest earner in the organisation and when the organisation is in financial difficulty ... it didn’t feel right to me that I wasn’t contributing to the bigger picture.

“We have a lot of people who do brilliant work in different areas and they are not as fortunate to earn what I earn. It wasn’t something I was looking to make public but I felt it was a no-brainer.”