Wilfried Zaha has revealed in an interview that he will no longer take the knee before matches .
According to the Ivorian, the practice is “degrading” and isn’t leading to real action on racism.
In December, a survey from the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) said that “players overwhelmingly support continuing this act of solidarity” but, with racist abuse of players making headlines on a near-daily basis, Zaha no longer sees the point
Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football summit, the 28-year-old explained: “I've said before that I feel like taking the knee is degrading and stuff because growing up my parents just let me know that I should be proud to be black no matter what and I feel like we should just stand tall.
"Because I feel like taking the knee now, it's becoming... we do it before games and even sometimes people forget that we have to do it before games.
"Trying to get the meaning behind it, it's becoming something that we just do now and that's not enough for me. I'm not going to take the knee, I'm not going to wear Black Lives Matter on the back of my shirt because it feels like it's a target.
Premier League kneeling
"We're isolating ourselves, we're trying to say that we're equal but we're isolating ourselves with these things that aren't even working anyway, so that's my stand on it.
“I feel like we should stand tall and now I don't really tend to speak on racism and stuff like that because I'm not here just to tick boxes.
"Unless action is going to happen, don't speak to me about it."
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