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There have been few better strikers to grace the English game in the modern era than Jermain Defoe, but he will also be remembered for his acts of kindness away from the football pitch, too.
Defoe called time on his playing days in 2022, and can proudly look back on a record of 325 career goals. That includes 163 in the Premier League and 20 for his country.
Five of those top flight goals came in one game for Spurs back in 2009, when the Lilywhites handed Wigan Athletic a humbling 9-1 defeat at White Hart Lane.
The fortunes of the two clubs have been rather different in the years since, with Spurs going on to compete at the top of the Premier League and winning the Europa League, while Wigan have been confined to League One for seven of the last 11 years.
Jermain Defoe’s kind gesture will not be forgotten by Wigan Athletic fans
Defoe’s second-half demolition job on Wigan in 2009 was a truly dark day for the Latics. Incredibly, it was only 1-0 at half-time, before Spurs turned on the style and handed out a record-breaking defeat.
That performance from Defoe is the stuff of legends, and his impact clearly stuck with the Wigan fans for years to come. So much so that, in 2020, with the club on the brink of financial ruin, supporters reached out to their former tormentor to see if he fancied making amends for the pain he caused.
With Wigan in administration and facing the threat of extinction after plummeting through the Football League, Latics fans were desperately scrambling to generate funds in case they would have to buy the club themselves.
They tried their luck in reaching out to Defoe, asking him to donate £1,000 for each of the five goals he scored against them. Turns out, a cheeky tweet did the job, with an anonymous donation of £5,000 being added to the Crowdfunding campaign shortly after.
The money is claimed to have come from Defoe, who reportedly had no hesitation in making the donation to help the club in their hour of need.
This, twinned with Defoe’s incredible connection to the late Sunderland fan, young Bradley Lowery, just reminds us what a brilliant person the former Spurs striker really was away from the game.
Wigan Athletic are in a strong position now
Thankfully, the club escaped administration when Phoenix 2021 Limited, run by Abdulrahman Al-Jasmi, swooped in to buy the Latics. That reprieve didn’t last long, though.
It was Talal Al-Hammad who was the front for the operation under Phoenix 2021, while Al-Jasmi was the money man. The problem was, it seemed he was very reluctant to spend that money, leaving wages unpaid and putting Wigan in yet another perilous situation – perhaps even more precarious than they were before.
Al-Jasmi and co. moved on in 2023, and now, under the stewardship of Mike Danson, Wigan are in a relatively comfortable position. They have a bright manager in Ryan Lowe, have made some really shrewd signings this summer, and could be a dark horse for a promotion push in League One.
It’s not been the best start to the season, but it’s still early days. In our early League One predictions for this season, we suggested Wigan would land around midtable, but they’ve recruited significantly since then.
With the likes of Paul Mullin up top for Wigan, and the ever-impressive Sam Tickle in goal, it’s hard to imagine a world where the Latics aren’t at least pushing for a play-off place this year.