Premier League players will not kneel before every match next season, and the anti-racist gesture will be limited to specific matches, the league said on Wednesday.
“We have decided to choose important moments to get down on one knee during the season to highlight our unity against all forms of racism and in doing so continue to show our solidarity in the name of a common cause,” the team leaders said in a statement. league official website. The league said it supports the leaders’ decision and will raise the level of anti-racist messages as part of its “No Racism” campaign, a phrase that appears on players’ sleeves.
English Premier League players have been on one knee before every game since June 2020, when the season resumed after a nearly three-month hiatus due to the Covid pandemic, a month after black US citizen George Floyd was strangled to death by a white police officer. In the United States.
Colin Kaepernick, a former San Francisco football player, started the gesture after he knelt on one knee during the national anthem in 2016 to call on his country to protect the rights of Americans from police violence, especially blacks, and this has become a common sight in many sports since Floyd’s murder.
But many English Premier League players, including those who have been subjected to racist abuse, have said the gesture is losing its effect, and some right-wing politicians in the UK have criticized its association with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Instead of every game, league players plan to kneel at the season opener this weekend, ahead of the No Racism Events in October and March, and Boxing Day after Christmas, the final day. season before the FA Cup and League Cup finals.
