PADERBORN, Germany (Reuters) – Borussia Dortmund players Jadon Sancho and Achraf Hakimi became the latest athletes to join a chorus of outrage over the death of a black man in Minneapolis by wearing shirts with the message “Justice for George Floyd” in a Bundesliga match on Sunday.
England forward Sancho, who scored the first hat-trick of his career in Dortmund’s 6-1 rout of Paderborn, and the Spanish-born Hakimi who plays international soccer for Morocco, took off their team shirts to display the message.
They followed in the footsteps of two other Bundesliga players as well as a stack of former and current athletes who have expressed their outrage over Floyd’s death.
Borussia Moenchengladbach’s Marcus Thuram knelt to honour Floyd after scoring in his team’s 4-1 home win over Union Berlin earlier on Sunday. U.S. defender Weston McKennie displayed a “Justice for George’ message on his armband in Saturday’s 1-0 home defeat by Werder Bremen.
Former NBA champion Stephen Jackson, Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James and teenage tennis player Coco Gauff have also spoken out about Floyd’s death, with James tweeting “Why doesn’t America love us!!!!???” on Sunday.
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was charged on Friday with murder in the death of unarmed 46-year-old Floyd after cellphone footage of the white officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck prompted a wave of protests across the United States.
Dozens of U.S. cities were bracing for another night of unrest on Sunday after cleaning up streets strewn with broken glass and burned out cars as curfews failed to quell confrontations between protesters and police.
As demonstrators broke windows and started fires, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds in many cities. In some cases, non-violent bystanders and members of the media were targeted.
(Writing by Zoran Milosavljevic; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
