Raheem Sterling, Gareth Southgate discuss racist abuse against England players, kneel down at Euro 2020 | Football news

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Raheem Sterling and Gareth Southgate believe the England squad sent a ‘powerful’ and ‘united’ message by kneeling at Euro 2020 and believe the gesture may continue to have meaning in the fight against racism.

Some criticism was leveled at the England squad during the tournament due to Southgate and his players’ decision to kneel ahead of the matches leading up to the final in what some saw as a ‘political’ move .

England players were booed as they knelt ahead of their Euro 2020 warm-up friendly against Austria. After the game, Southgate said his players were taking a stand against racism and not making any political gestures. There were, however, further taunts from fan sections ahead of the rest of England’s games in June and July.

In light of online abuse targeting Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho following their missed shots in the Euro 2020 final, Sterling believes it is important that kneeling continues to be a powerful anti-racism symbol for the England team and ensures that awareness continues on the issue of discrimination.

Image: Sterling says racism can sometimes be ‘swept under the rug’ Image: Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho have been targets of racist abuse on social media after England’s final defeat at Euro 2020

Sterling told BBC Radio 4: “How we as a team took a stand, I think the big question was’ are we going to continue doing this through the Euro? “.

“And I think most of the time when racism comes up or something has happened, most of the time in football and most of society, we tend to deal with it during that time, for these five days or this week and then we brush it under the rug and it’s okay now.

“When the next scenario happens, that’s when we go back there. But we as a country, the players who have been in those scenarios face some of this racist abuse.

“Overall, we just want to keep emphasizing that. Yes, there have been times where we’ve sat down and said, ‘Is the message still powerful? “, and we said yes and as a group and as a collective we tried to keep that going.”

Southgate added: ‘At the very least it had to be a team where we were united on how we saw it and we could send a message to the young kids watching that I think the guys maybe didn’t. realized how powerful that would be in a tournament because they wanted to focus on football.

“They want to be judged primarily on football, but what Raheem did, in that space, in particular. I remember you posted the two posts about how (Tosin) Adarabioyo was reported as a young player and a similar kind of story with Phil (Foden), and the difference, and the way these things had been reported was clear.

Image: Southgate praised Sterling for using his platform to discuss social injustice

“So there have been a lot of things that have happened over the last few years including the incident with George Floyd which I think drove, it educated me a lot and I wanted to represent the players in the best possible way. “

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