Sarina Weigman on the stand against racism, believes that taking the knee is ‘not good enough’ for impact anymore.
Sarina Wiegman, the manager of England, claims that her team has opted to stop kneeling before games because the anti-racism gesture’s impact is “not good enough.”
After defender Jess Carter disclosed that she has been the target of racist taunts on social media during the tournament, the Lionesses will not take a knee before their Euro 2025 semi-final matchup against Italy on Tuesday.
As it was “clear we and football need to find another way to tackle racism,” England’s players declared on Sunday that they would no longer take the knee.
“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,” Wiegman told BBC Sport’s Dan Roan on Monday.
“When there is this form of racism we felt we have to do something else, something different, so that’s why we are not taking the knee.”
“We feel like it has gone past that [taking the knee] now,” Georgia Stanway said.
“We feel it is still happening even when we are taking the knee. We have decided that we will stand and we will not do that.
“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.”
Stanway praised Carter’s decision to go public about the abuse and pledged the support of the squad for their team-mate.
“It’s horrendous,” said Stanway. “It’s really difficult because we will never understand, but we want to create an environment where Jess feels safe and we want her to be able to tell us in those moments where she is experiencing something because as a collective we can be so powerful in order to try and make change.
“That is exactly what we have done now. It is not only Jess thinking about herself, she is thinking about other players, she is thinking about the next generation and it is such an unselfish thing to do to be able to talk about something you are going through in order to try and make change at the end of it.”