‘Unity is strength’: Liverpool squad take a knee at Anfield in powerful show of solidarity with George Floyd protests
Players knelt around the centre circle in a photograph that was later posted on the club’s social media channels
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Your support makes all the difference.Liverpool’s first-team squad took a knee around the centre circle at Anfield on Monday in a show of solidarity following the death of George Floyd.
The picture, taken during a training session at the stadium, was later posted on social media with the caption: “Unity is strength #BlackLivesMatter.”
Captain Jordan Henderson, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold were among those to individually tweet the image alongside Liverpool’s official club accounts.
Floyd, a black man, died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes even after Floyd stopped moving and pleading for air.
Jadon Sancho was among four Bundesliga players to show gestures of support for Floyd on the weekend, with the Englishman revealing a message calling for justice on his undershirt.
Several other Premier League players have posted messages on social media since protests erupted across the US, with Manchester United and England striker Marcus Rashford writing on Monday that “people are hurting and people need answers.”
“Black lives matter. Black culture matters. Black communities matter. We matter,” he said.
The chairman of anti-racism organisation Kick It Out, Sanjay Bhandari, has urged all Premier League players to take a knee when celebrating goals once football returns in the UK.
“Every player should do it. It should be teams doing it,” he told the Guardian. “You saw the Erling Haaland celebration after the first game back where all the Borussia Dortmund players did the social distancing celebration. They could all take a knee.
“Racism’s not about black players or brown fans. It’s about all of us. Racism corrodes society and we’re all hurt by it. Everyone should want to demonstrate their solidarity and disgust.
“I would like to encourage the players to protest if they want to. But I would also like to encourage them to do it in a way that doesn’t expose them to unnecessary sanction. If they could do that by taking a knee, well if every player did that it would be quite a powerful message.
“I would be interested to hear what the authorities thought of that, whether it would constitute a breach of the rules. To me that is about demonstrating solidarity.”
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