The future is now, the new technological advance that the former United player proposes

Part of the beauty of former Manchester United midfielder Juan Mata's Common Goal concept is the simplicity of it. The initiative, launched in 2017, has individuals and organizations within the world of football contributing at least one percent of their income to a collective fund that supports football charities around the world.

Early adopters of the project included highly successful international players such as former Italian captain Giorgio Chiellini and German World Cup winner Mats Hummels, as well as US Women's National Team megastars Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan.

Three years ago, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp became the first big-name manager to join the movement, which also includes UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin and Danish club FC Nordsjælland. However, the Common Goal movement becomes much more complicated when the group begins to try to engage and organize its diverse global community in other ways.

Assembling a movement of football stars willing to commit to their income is one thing, but harnessing their collective power is something else entirely. Such a strategy may sound logical, but too often in the nonprofit arena, the approach is clearly analog. Fear that new technologies will be expensive or ineffective can be a stumbling block for large charities that have used the same reliable fundraising techniques for decades.

Is it possible that this technology could reach Manchester United?

Of course, it's all very well to sign a partnership with a tech company, even one like Chiliz, that is specifically set up to come up with uses for blockchain in the world of sports, and not have the promised impact at the launch event, which, by true took place at Paris Blockchain Week.