Wilfried Zaha believes taking the knee before the start of Premier League matches has become “degrading” and has challenged football authorities to do more to tackle racism.
Zaha, 28, is the first top-flight player to say he won’t kneel before kick off, insisting the act is doing nothing but paying lip service after a rise in racist abuse targeted at footballers on social media.
“The meaning behind the whole thing is becoming something that we just do now. That’s not enough. I’m not going to take the knee,” the Crystal Palace forward said at the Financial Times’ Business of Football summit.
“Growing up, my parents just let me know that I should just be proud to be black, no matter what, and I just think we should stand tall.”
Footballers have knelt before kick off in Premier League and Football League games since the Black Lives Matter protests last summer.
Initially Premier League clubs printed Black Lives Matter logos on player shirts, but at the start of this season that changed to No Room for Racism.
“I’m not going to wear Black Lives Matter on the back of my shirt because it feels like it’s a target,” Zaha said, referencing the increase in racist slurs and attacks footballers have been subject to on social media.
“We are trying to say we are equal but these things are not working. Unless there’s change, don’t ask me about it. Unless action is going to happen I don’t want to hear about it.”
Brentford striker Ivan Toney, whose club have now stopped taking a knee, also spoke out against the routine before kick off in Championship games, claiming the players are being “used as puppets” to appease those higher up.
“We have had a long discussion about that; why we are not taking a knee,” he told Sky Sports. “Everyone has had their say, and everyone agrees [that] we have been taking the knee for however long now and still nothing has changed.
“We are kind of being used as puppets, in my eyes; take the knee and the people at the top can rest for a while now, which is pretty silly and pretty pointless. Nothing is changing.
“The punishments need to be stronger. You’re going to do so much and, in a way, you have to get that helping hand, but it doesn’t look like it’s coming at the moment. So you have to push for that and hopefully things change.”
He added: “We are focusing on things behind the scenes at the moment. But come Saturday we won’t be taking the knee. If we come up with something else to do in future then we know we are going to do that.”
Last September QPR director of football Les Ferdinand was critical of taking the knee, saying: “The message has been lost. It is now not dissimilar to a fancy hashtag or a nice pin badge. Taking the knee will not bring about change in the game – actions will.”
Their comments echo the sentiment Gary Neville expressed last month when talking about anti-racism campaigns footballers participated in two decades ago.
“I used to hold the banners out at the training games, do the picture, then drop it on the floor, wander off and not think about ‘Kick It Out’ again for the next 12 months, so probably did 99 per cent of players,” Neville said in conversation with Micah Richards as part of a documentary called “Micah Richards: Tackling Racism”.
Sports people have taken a knee in a show of protest against institutional racism since Colin Kaepernick opted to kneel at the start of an NFL preseason game during the American national anthem in 2016.
But racism is British football has never gone away, despite the increase in conversation around the issue. Last season Kick It Out reported a 53 per cent rise in reported racial abuse in the professional game. It was also revealed that 71 per cent of football supporters had witnessed racist abuse online. And when fans briefly returned to games at the start of this season, a number of Millwall supporters booed the pre-kick off protest.
In the space of one week last month, Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial, Reece James, Axel Tuanzebe and Romaine Sawyers were all racially abused.
Rashford responded to the abuse on social media, tweeting: “Humanity and social media at its worst. Yes I’m a black man and I live every day proud that I am. No one, or no one comment, is going to make me feel any different. So sorry if you were looking for a strong reaction, you’re just simply not going to get it here.”
Former Arsenal striker and BBC pundit Ian Wright said: “As long as the powers that be continue to let people like that feel like it’s something they can do, because it seems to be a fad now – a black player plays poorly, or they think they’ve played poorly, and they come (at them) with whatever it is.
“There’s ways of doing it. There’s ways of catching people and I don’t think they are vigilant enough. Nowhere near.”
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