Klopp doesn’t expect sporting boycotts in UK

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Jurgen Klopp says he doesn’t expect the Premier League to follow major sports teams and players in the US and boycott fixtures in protest to continued racial injustices

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is not expecting the boycotting of sporting events over racial injustice to spread to the UK.

A series of major fixtures in the United States have been postponed in the last two days after NBA stars began boycotting games in protest at the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin last week.

Games in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the National Hockey League and the WNBA have also been called off.

Klopp was asked about the matter as he held a press conference to preview the Premier League champions’ season-opening Community Shield clash with Arsenal on Saturday.

Klopp said: “Whatever actions they take there they will have their reasons for it and I don’t see them at the moment coming in England, but we have to see.

“It is a worldwide issue but, at the moment for some specific cases, they are thinking about proper actions in America because another thing happened that shouldn’t have happened.

“That is why the players there do what they do but I don’t see it coming at the moment in England.”

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The NBA issued a statement on Thursday saying it was hoping “to resume games either Friday or Saturday”.

There have since been reports players have agreed to return to action.

Megan Rapinoe, one of the stars of the United States team which won the women’s football World Cup in France last year, says “everyone should be outraged” by racism.

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She said in a UEFA ‘No To Racism’ campaign video: “We have such a huge platform, and from an early age on this team I realised you can have such an impact off the field even just by saying something.

“With regards to racism, all the white players should be outraged every time there’s a racist incident and a lot of times it’s just the player who’s having the incident done to them or who’s having the abuse put on them, they’re the ones that are outraged and everyone else is like, ‘OK, we need to calm this down’.

“Everyone should be outraged.”

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