After three weeks of impasse, after hearing their morals questioned by British politicians and witnessing their clubs start to line up for government bailouts, the players of the English Premier League decided to take matters into their own hands.

The captains of the league's 20 clubs, as well as many of its managers and several executives, dialled into a video conference meeting - with the aim of establishing a collective position on a subject that has threatened to turn the English public against English football at a time of national crisis.

As the country's death toll from the coronavirus pandemic rises - Britain had almost 8,000 Covid-19 deaths as of yesterday - the issue of whether the stars of the English top flight - the richest domestic football tournament on the planet and one of the country's proudest cultural exports - should take a pay cut has moved front and centre.

How football - which was placed on indefinite hiatus in England on March 13 - has found itself cast as one of the villains of the crisis, speaks volumes not only about the political reality of the game in England, but also of the singular role it plays in the national psyche.

Now, clubs accustomed to the unyielding loyalty of fans have managed to alienate even their most ardent followers.

Players, more accustomed to being seen as heroes, have been accused not only of failing to help their teams stanch losses, but also of the much more serious offence of not offering financial support to Britain's overworked National Health Service (NHS).

In the space of three weeks, a discussion that started with the question of how the Premier League will ride out the economic impact of the shutdown has led to its stars starting their own initiative - independent of their clubs - to funnel part of their salaries straight to the NHS.

It did not start out like this. Talks over what role the players might have in alleviating the financial impact on the clubs that pay their salaries began in the middle of March, just a few days after the postponement of the season.

At first, the process was relatively straightforward and all involved thought those talks had progressed positively enough.

The Premier League initially suggested that all players take a 15 per cent salary cut for the rest of the year. The union focused on a combination of cuts and deferrals that amounted to a figure of 30 per cent for a year, which could be reduced depending on how much losses the clubs could claw back.

That seemed to form the outline of an eventual agreement. But, on March 31, Tottenham followed Newcastle's lead and placed most of its non-playing staff on furlough, effectively asking the British government - in accordance with public welfare laws - to pay 80 per cent of their salaries for the next three months.

A few days later, Liverpool made the same announcement, before being forced to backtrack. Spurs' move was greeted with derision and anger - not just from fans, but also from players.

It was the moment a commercial negotiation suddenly morphed into something far larger and more damaging to all sides: a conversation, in essence, about the sport's role and responsibilities in public life.

A group of players, led by Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, had already been discussing setting up a charitable fund to help the NHS.

Others, including Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford, had started private initiatives to help provide meals to underprivileged children.

But now, through some trick of the light, what they gave back to society became firmly enmeshed with what they were prepared to give back to their clubs.

Many of the players felt that Spurs' decision was an attempt to back them into a corner, forcing them to take a pay cut or risk appearing greedy, aloof and out of touch during the pandemic.

What they feared transpired two days later, with the country's health secretary, Matt Hancock, urging them to "play their part" by taking a pay cut. Other politicians weighed in, but the players did not see the link between those two things quite so clearly.

They wanted to help, but wondered if doing so with a pay cut - rather than direct donations - might simply save money for their team owners, rather than benefiting the NHS.

Their salaries are taxed, after all; any cut would lead to a reduction of income for the treasury, and ultimately, the NHS.

That situation was complicated by the role of the players' union, led by its longstanding chief executive, Gordon Taylor, who is thought to be the highest-paid trade union leader in the world at £2.2 million (S$3.9 million) a year.

The union works not just for Premier League players; it also represents the interests of the hundreds of professionals further down football's pyramid.

Its concern, in negotiations, was that any agreement with the Premier League might later be copied for use in the lower leagues, where salaries are markedly lower.

Its priority was to protect members who could not afford to take a pay cut, or who had already received missives from clubs commanding them to accept a reduced salary.

Indeed, Taylor initially refused even to countenance the idea of players accepting a cut, rather than a deferral, but the position, put to him by the clubs, particularly those in the lower tiers, was stark: There would be either no cut now or no salaries at all when teams start to go under.

By then, the battle lines had been drawn. With the two failing to find any common ground, the players decided to circumvent the formal discussions, arranging a meeting of their own.

On Wednesday, they reached their conclusion, an initiative called Players Together, releasing a statement that declared a goal of quickly "granting funds to the front line" of the NHS.

The players must hope that move will not only help in the way it was intended, but also put an end to the public backlash, and to the easy depiction of them as feckless and greedy. But that cannot, at a stroke, solve the problems caused by three weeks of rancour during which everyone has come out losing.

NYTIMES