How 'taking the knee' spoiled football

Premier League footballers ‘taking a knee’ came in at the tail end of the 2019-20 season, when stadiums were empty because of the first Covid lockdown. Thus were the game’s moneyed elite spared having to initiate the fad in front of full houses. By the time supporters returned it was a fait accompli, normalised by endless self-righteous newspaper columns and political speeches on air by TV football pundits.

Only one view of the matter was permitted. Any supporter who expressed dissent about the gesture of support for the Black Lives Matter campaign risked being branded a knuckle-scraping racist.

Given that the gesture emerged in the United States as a show of outright rejection towards society – and given that British BLM supporters were at the time merrily defacing the Cenotaph and Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square during their ‘mostly peaceful’ riots – this demand for universal acquiescence was outrageous. While the players may have been down on one knee, the fans were being brought to heel.