Kneeling debate has diverted attention from racism issue, says Thierry Henry

The debate over whether football players should take a knee before the games has diverted the attention from racism, said former Arsenal striker Thierry Henry.

Players in England's top flight football have been taking a knee since July last year, initially in support of the 'Black Lives Matter' movement before the Premier League and English Football League linked the gesture to their own anti-racism campaigns.

Henry, who himself suffered racial abuse during his playing career pointed out that the cause has suffered with the recent debate on who is taking the knee or standing.

"That's not the cause," he told CNN Sport.

"The cause is: what are you going to do for it to be better for everybody? Equality. Everybody, and obviously I'm going to talk about my community.

"I thought kneeling was a strong message and we all know where it comes from, but then the discussion moved to: are we standing or are we kneeling?

"What about the cause? What about the main point of why we are doing it in the first place? Or why we still have to do it? That's something for me that is very important and we keep on forgetting about it."

The 43-year-old Henry, last week deleted his social media accounts to protest against the platforms for not taking action against anonymous account holders who are guilty of racism and bullying online.

English football's governing bodies said last month that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were "havens for abuse" and urged the social media companies to tackle the problem in the wake of racist messages aimed at players.

Instagram has announced a series of measures to tackle online abuse, while Twitter, who took action on more than 700 cases of "abuse and hateful conduct" related to football in Britain in 2019, promised to continue its efforts to curb the problem.