UEFA and FIFA have a responsibility to provide national associations with emergency funding to help alleviate the devastating financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it was last night claimed.

UEFA announced on Tuesday they had set up a working group comprising representatives of the European Clubs Association, European Leagues and FIFPro in to assess the financial consequences of the continent-wide shutdown of the game.

The suspension of the Scottish game last week has left many clubs facing an uncertain future - and Hearts asked their players to accept a 50 per cent pay cut on Wednesday after revealing they are set to lose over £1m in revenue in the coming weeks.

Tony Higgins - who is the Scottish representative of FIFPro, the international footballers’ union – believes the repercussions will be “catastrophic” and is hopeful that both UEFA and FIFA can provide a “crisis lifeline” to clubs through the national associations.

“In terms of the economic impact, we are very keen that they monitor what is happening in the confederation and the global situation as well,” he said.

“This requires to some degree, like every other business, some emergency funding on a temporary basis. Now, we don’t know where that is going to come from. The national federations will establish what they can do on their own.

“But we are keen, and in fairness to UEFA, the European Leagues and the European Club Association, they are as well, to measure the potential impact of this. People know it’s going to be catastrophic, but we have to take some measure of what it will entail.

“UEFA is our confederation and FIFA is a global organisation. Ultimately, UEFA and FIFA have resources far greater than most individual federations. Whether they can do something in terms of emergency funding is a matter that has to be looked at.”

Higgins added: “That is why they have set up this socio-economic working group comprising leagues, federations and players, to see what can be done, what potential resources there may be at that level in football to filter down into the domestic leagues and competitions.

“There already send money to local federations in a variety of ways. But what they are discussing at the highest level is whether that could be enhanced.

“Obviously everybody is looking at budgets. Now the Euros have been postponed that lucrative source of income won’t be there for another year.

“Ultimately the members of UEFA and FIFA are the federations, not the leagues. That is why FIFPro are very keen to get this investigation done as quickly as possible because I think that all businesses are looking for a crisis lifeline.

“Hopefully UEFA can look at that sympathetically. FIFA as well. This is a global issue not only a European issue. FIFA have a global responsibility to the game.

"Hopefully, it might be decided that resources can be diverted. That is a political issue that will be addressed further down the road. But that is the type of thing that is being discussed.

“Of course, when it impacts on the whole game, while the top clubs generally have better resources, for 90 per cent of clubs this is a major short term problem. I know everybody is making speculative dates for resumption, but nobody really knows at this stage when the leagues can go ahead.”