A decision has been made
Premier League clubs will no longer take the knee before games this season, but will continue to do so for high-profile fixtures such as Boxing Day and cup finals.
Players have been taking the knee for the last two seasons to protests against discrimination in response to the murder George Floyd by US police in May 2020.
All 20 clubs have been in discussions the past two weeks to decide if they should continue the act and as per The Times, the collective decision is to stop the gesture.
As an alternative, players will take the knee during specific fixtures throughout the footballing calendar. These include the ‘No Room For Racism’ campaign in October, Boxing Day and both the Carabao Cup and FA Cup finals.
Players believe that by using the gesture for selected matches will have a greater impact as opposed to doing it before every game. They also didn’t want to abandon the gesture entirely as some players didn’t want to give into the criticism received from people, which included Home Secretary, Priti Patel.
Some players had stopped taking the knee before games before the decision had been made. Wilfried Zaha of Crystal Palace opted to stand after he said the anti-racism gesture was “degrading”
The whole Brentford team also stopped taking the knee as they felt the gesture no longer had the same impact. Several Championship clubs also followed suit, including recently-promoted Bournemouth.
Crystal Palace and Arsenal begin the Premier League campaign on Friday before the rest of the first round of fixtures take place this weekend.
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