The England women's football team has chosen to stop taking the knee before matches, stating that the gesture has not had a significant impact on combating racism. Following incidents of racist abuse directed at player Jess Carter, the squad feels it must find more effective methods to address the issue. Coach Sarina Wiegman and midfielder Georgia Stanway emphasized that taking the knee no longer feels adequate, and the players will now stand at kick-off to promote further conversations about racism in football, aiming for a stronger reaction to racial discrimination.
Taking the knee, that's not enough. We have done that for a while. The impact is not good enough, it's not as big as we think.
We feel like it has gone past that [taking the knee] now. We feel it is still happening even when we are taking the knee.
We think that is a way of making change in itself because we want to get people talking - we want to tell people that what is being done isn't enough.
It's really difficult because we will never understand, but we want to create an environment where Jess feels safe.
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