Wilfried Zaha feels that the practice of taking the knee before Premier League matches has not improved the actual situation.
Wilfried Zaha explained why he will no longer take the knee to support the “Black Lives Matter” movement started by Premier League. All the players and staff alike made a decision to take a knee before games over the summer last year for the good cause.
However, many are of the opinion that the practice is losing its value and there has been no serious action taken against racism. Back in December 2020, a survey from the Professional Footballers’ Association said: “players overwhelmingly support continuing this act of solidarity”. Although, the cases of racial abuse have not seen an end and Zaha refuses to believe in the practice.
Why wouldn’t he take the knee?
The 28-year-old explained at the Financial Times Business of Football summit: “I’ve said before that I feel like taking the knee is degrading and stuff because growing up my parents just let me know that I should be proud to be black no matter what and I feel like we should just stand tall. Because I feel like taking the knee now, it’s becoming… we do it before games. And even sometimes people forget that we have to do it before games.”
“Trying to get the meaning behind it, it’s becoming something that we just do now. And that’s not enough for me. I’m not going to take the knee, I’m not going to wear Black Lives Matter on the back of my shirt. Because it feels like it’s a target. We’re isolating ourselves, we’re trying to say that we’re equal. But we’re isolating ourselves with these things that aren’t even working anyway, so that’s my stand on it. I feel like we should stand tall and now I don’t really tend to speak on racism and stuff like that because I’m not here just to tick boxes.”
“Unless action is going to happen, don’t speak to me about it.”
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