Brentford striker Ivan Toney has explained the club stopped taking a knee due to lack of action to combat racism in English football.
The Bees are among a number of clubs, as well as players such as Wilfried Zaha, to distance themselves from the gesture in recent months.
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Designed as a powerful move to show football’s zero tolerance for racism, clubs up and down the country have knelt before kick-off since June 2020, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the United States.
Football continues to be plagued by racism and in recent weeks, countless players have suffered vile abuse online.
In Scotland, Rangers and Celtic both stood on Sunday in solidarity with Glen Kamara, who was allegedly racially abused in the Europa League game against Slavia Prague.
Back in September, QPR director of football Les Ferdinand argued taking a knee has become ‘good PR’, with little sign of real transformative action in the fight against racism.
Brentford also expressed a feeling that the gesture has ‘lost its impact’ when they decided to stop in February.
And Toney, the Bees’ leading goalscorer this season, insists racism in football has become a tiresome cycle of meaningless conversations followed by no actual progress.
“Everybody knows it’s not getting any better, it’s actually getting worse,” the 25-year-old told the EFL Show on talkSPORT 2.
“You hear about it for a few days, it’s all out there in the papers, it’s on Twitter or whatever – then two days later, back to normal and nothing gets done.
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“There was the Reece James stuff and the Wilfried Zaha stuff, nothing happened. There was the Ian Wright stuff, nothing happened. We’re still in the same boat.
“It’s kind of a boring cycle that we’re in. Whether it’s people on Twitter writing whatever rubbish, or being brave over a computer, nothing happens and they feel comfortable because they know nothing is going to happen.
“It’s just a boring topic to be talking about because nothing gets done.”
Join former Blackpool & QPR Manager Ian Holloway alongside Dan Windle & Mark Webster from 7pm tomorrow on talkSPORT 2.
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