Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick believes he could help a franchise win a championship if he played in the sport again, despite an eight-year absence.

Kaepernick spent six years with the San Francisco 49ers, helping them to their first Super Bowl since 1994 during the 2012 season, but has not competed in the NFL since 2016.

“We’re still training, still pushing,” Kaepernick told Sky Sports News. “So hopefully. We’ve just got to get one of these team owners to open up.

“It’s something I’ve trained my whole life for, so to be able to step back on the field, I think that would be a major moment, a major accomplishment for me. I think I could bring a lot to a team and help them win a championship.”

In August 2016 and during his final season with the San Francisco 49ers, Kaepernick began kneeling during the pre-game national anthem in the NFL to protest racial injustice and police brutality.

‘Taking a knee’ made headlines globally and still happens in sports all over the world, including before certain matches during the Premier League and WSL seasons.

At the time, two days after pledging to donate $1m to community organisations, Kaepernick said: “The message is that we have a lot of issues in this country that we need to deal with.

“We have a lot of people that are oppressed. We have a lot of people that aren’t treated equally, that aren’t given equal opportunities,” Kaepernick said speaking at Nike’s ‘Art of Victory’ exhibition in partnership with the Pompidou Centre at the Olympic Games.

Kaepernick said he would continue to kneel “until justice is served”. The protests spread across the NFL in September 2016, and during the first week of the season, 11 players from the west to east coast protested.

Taking a knee also began happening in the NWSL, with World-Cup winning footballer Megan Rapinoe kneeling during a national anthem in September 2016 and saying “we need to have a more thoughtful, two-sided conversation about racial issues in this country”.

The then US-president, Barack Obama, also spoke about Kaepernick’s actions, and said: “He’s exercising his constitutional right to make a statement. I think there are a lot of ways you can do it when it comes to the flag and national anthem.”

Could Kaepernick ever feature in the Olympics?

The NFL reports that more than 20 million people are currently playing flag football across 100 countries, with the five-versus-five version of American football a non-contact sport that is played by people of all ages.

The next Olympic Games take place in Los Angeles in 2028 and flag football is one of the sports set to be introduced for the first time, something Kaepernick would love to be a part of.

“Hopefully we’ll be out there,” he said. “We’re going to work out some things, see if we can make it in there. Would love to be out there.”

At the Paris Olympics, Kaepernick watched USA fight back from a 13-point deficit against Serbia in the semi-finals of the men’s basketball and said it was a “phenomenal game to be able to be at”.

The USA won their fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal in a thrilling game against hosts France on Saturday, who they beat 98-87, with Lebron James scoring 14 points as he won his fourth Olympic medal and third gold.

Steph Curry led the way to the win, scoring 24, while Devin Booker and Kevin Durant – the first four-time men’s gold medallist in Olympic basketball history – scored 15 each.

“Hopefully they [Team USA] continue to build on their legacy but we have some of the all-time greats on this team,” he said. “You have a lot of players who are more on the tail-end of their career, but also performing at levels that we just haven’t seen players do at their ages.

“When you get to see competitors who compete against each other their whole career get to team up and actually play together, so to be able to see the dynamic of Lebron, Steph, KD [Kevin Durant], Joel [Embiid], Taytum, D Booker, they’ve got the full squad out there.

“They’re all All-Stars and for me I think about how you even put a team together, like, these are the five that are at any given moment. I don’t want to be the one making that decision because everybody’s so talented.”

Kaepernick was in Paris running the 10km in the Marathon for All in partnership with Nike, along with Olympic champions Caster Semenya and Mo Farah. The event allowed amateurs to tackle the Olympic marathon course the night between the men’s and women’s races.

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