Regardless of what you think of Paul Pogba, you got to support him on this initiative. While the Frenchman is indeed a polarizing figure, even his detractors have to acknowledge what a great and important thing he’s doing here.
Amid a wave of ugly racist incidents hurting the beautiful game, Pogba produced and handed out wrist-bands emblazoned with messages that say no to racism. Pogba, a victim of racial abuse himself back in August, has seen his teammates Jesse Lingard, Marcus Rashford and Fred all suffer the same fate this season.
The black and white wrist bands, which read “we are one” and “say no to racism,” were worn by the team in yesterday’s 4-1 home win over Newcastle United.
“Basically I was thinking about doing this for a long time,” the midfielder said. “I mean, a lot of players in a lot of leagues — not only in Premier League, in Italy, Spain, everywhere — and we keep hearing this.
“I don’t want to do president, I don’t want to do a political guy. We are just football players, we want to enjoy that. The fans need to enjoy coming and seeing some nice football and that’s it.”
“So, this is to show that we’re against that [racism]. I don’t want to go and make interviews but just I know that it will make people talk. We are just for football, enjoying football. We do what we love.
“We give joy to the fans, to everyone, to all the spectators and that’s all we want to see in the stadium. I think it’s ignorance. Ignorance and stuff like that, and just to show people that you are all one. We are all one.”
Pogba is absolutely right, this isn’t political issue and you don’t need to be politician to speak up against the dehumanizing that occurs with every incident of racism. It feels like we’re having this same discussion every weekend now as new incidents of racial abuse, both online on social media and in real life at the stadium grounds, are occurring every week.
Pogba also spoke out against racism in football in August of 2017.
Last weekend saw Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger racially abused at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, following an aggressive challenge in the game by Spurs forward Heung-Min Son, who himself has also been victimized by racial abuse earlier this season. And just the week before that you had the Manchester Derby incident with Fred.
In other words, it’s a revolting epidemic and kudos to Pogba for speaking out about this issue; just like he spoke out against Islamophobia after the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017. The Frenchman and his teammates visit Burnley for a Premier League fixture tomorrow.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com on Twitter here and his cat on Instagram at this link.