It’s hard to argue that English football is chronically racist. Unlike in many boardrooms up and down Britain, there are no all-white teams in the Premier League. The number of black players has doubled since the Premier League started twenty years ago.
Yet instead of letting the players – black and white – do the talking on the pitch, last night’s long-awaited Premier League restart was turned into a sanctimonious display of moralising. Players took the knee before kick off and spouted platitudes before and after the games.
Confusingly, for the fair-weather fan who can’t remember which player is which, every footballer’s name was replaced on the back of their shirts with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogan. ‘It shows we’re going in the right direction. Little by little we’re seeing change. It was natural, it was organic,’ said Raheem Sterling, the star Man City player, of the decision to bend down before kick off.
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