Chelsea’s Romelu Lukaku wants stronger action than taking the knee and demands social media giants tackle online racism

ROMELU LUKAKU claims the time may have come for players to take stronger action than taking the knee in the fight against discrimination.

Chelsea star Lukaku fears the pre-match gesture may not be doing enough to end racism – just days after team-mate Marcos Alonso revealed he would no longer kneel because it was losing impact.

Lukaku told CNN: “I think we can take stronger positions, basically.

“Yeah, we are taking the knee, but in the end, everybody’s clapping but… sometimes after the game, you see another insult.

“I have to fight, because I’m not fighting only for myself. I’m fighting for my son, for my future kids, for my brother, for all of the other players and their kids, you know, for everybody.

“At the end of the day, football should be an enjoyable game… You cannot kill the game by discrimination. That should never happen.

“Football is joy, it’s happiness and it shouldn’t be a place where you feel unsafe because of the opinion from some uneducated people.”

Lukaku has also taken aim at social media giants like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for not doing enough to stop abuse online.

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And he said it is now time for the tech bosses, government, PFA and senior stars to get in one room and thrash out the issue so it is sorted once and for all.

He added: “The captains of every team, and four or five players, like the big personalities of every team, should have a meeting with the CEOs of Instagram and governments and the FA and the PFA, and we should just sit around the table and have a big meeting about it.

“How we can attack it straight away, not only from the men’s game, but also from the women’s game.

“I think just all of us together and just have a big meeting and have a conference and just talk about stuff that needs to be addressed to protect the players, but also to protect fans and younger players that want to become professional footballers.

“If you want to stop something, you can really do it. We as players, we can say: ‘Yeah, we can boycott social media,’ but I think it’s those companies that have to come and talk to the teams, or to the governments, or to the players themselves and find a way how to stop it because I really think they can.”