Hello and welcome to beat our football ranks.

This weekend we saw football take a stand about the horrific killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

We saw Western McKinney, Marcus Turam, Jaden Sancho, Ashraf Hakimi and countless others on social media

make a crucial statement that needs to be heard by everyone across the globe.

The systemic racism towards the black community is abhorrent.

There's been so much said from so many people who are wiser, more educated and more insightful

than me on this, and I'd encourage you to spend some time this week reading and observing the calls to action that are taking place everywhere.

But it struck me that where these players lead, it's our duty as fellow human beings

and people who class ourselves of being firmly against racism to follow and use whatever

platforms we have to try and enact that change. This is football. It's the most widely watched

game on the planet. It's the working class game, the game of the people of all people. It

breathes from the streets of London and the

favelas of Rio, from Atlanta to Accra, from Beijing to Bogota, from Canberra to Cairo. Our heroes

come in all different shapes and sizes in all colors and creeds across the planet. It's the world's

game and it belongs to everyone. There should be no barriers to entry. When racism

riz its head in any form from the stands or the players or the governing bodies, from explicit

chanting to implicit privilege, we must condemn it and fight it with everything that we've got,

every single time. Inaction is part of the problem. Silence is compliance. We haven't been good enough,

and I'm sorry for that. But this fight for equality cannot stop our stadiums or in our game.

It must be channeled into every single conduit of society until this virus, this pandemic that has

lasted millennia, is chased from the system until it is extinguished. This is going to involve a lot of reading,

a lot of listening and a lot of self-examination. It's not going to be comfortable examining your

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