Wednesday 27 March 2019 20:14, UK
YouTuber Manny Brown says racism is a problem in grassroots football and believes he has found himself on the substitutes' bench because he is black.
Brown, who has more than one-and-a-half million subscribers on YouTube, was speaking as part of Tackling Racism: Grassroots which will air on Sky Sports News on Wednesday at 7pm.
He plays for Sunday league team Under the Radar FC and uploads their matches online, and says racism is also an issue at the bottom of the football pyramid.
He said: "If anything it gets worse the older you get. When I was younger I moved to an area that's predominantly white, being the only 'black kid' in the team. I didn't think too much of it, but I would find myself on the bench against people I knew I was better than.
"We even had one issue where my brother got picked for the district team, but because our surname isn't typically a 'black surname' the guy was acting like he couldn't find it on the list.
"Little things like that where people have expectations of what you're supposed to be like, look and sound."
Manny's brother Tobi Brown, who also plays for Under the Radar and has three million YouTube subscribers, says people need to be educated about the impact their words can have.
"When people are racist to you, they have the intention of actually offending you and trying to get a reaction out of you, or they don't know what they're saying," he explained.
"So giving them a reaction is going to give them what they want. When you don't react in a way that isn't angry or aggressive, people kind of realise 'I haven't achieved anything from doing this'.
"If people don't stamp it out from an early age, it becomes second nature and that's not what you want. Educating people about racism and its effects is something that should be done."
