CHELSEA STAR Romelu Lukaku believes it’s now time for all parties – footballers, social media companies and governing bodies – to come together and take on the responsibility of ending the abuse.

During an interview with CNN, the Belgium forward suggested that if football authorities really wanted to eradicate racism from the game they would take the same view they took with the announcement of a European Super League earlier this year.

Lukaku indicated that the collective spirit in the football world that managed to “stop the Super League in one day” and questions why that same positive stance can’t be applied to eradicating abuse from social media platforms.

“If you want to stop something, you can really do it,” he said during the interview. “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.

“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,” Lukaku urged.

“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.”

“I think we can take stronger positions, basically,” he said.

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

“When we stop taking the knee, then what’s next? Because racism, homophobia, everything is not just going to go away. So what are we going to continue to do after the knee stopped?”