Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford was targeted by racist trolls on Twitter as this ugly problem rears its head again for the second time this week.
As reported by BBC Sport, Man Utd midfielder Paul Pogba suffered similar attacks when his penalty was saved in the 1-1 draw with Wolves on Monday night.
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Associated Press reporter Rob Harris shows below that Rashford is seeing racist insults thrown his way as well after his penalty miss at home to Crystal Palace this afternoon.
A search of Twitter of Rashford’s name after he misses a penalty shows how toxic the platform can be and the challenge to eradicate racist abuse pic.twitter.com/NzreXDWL9B
— Rob Harris (@RobHarris) August 24, 2019
This is hugely concerning and it seems clear Twitter needs to be doing much, much more to sort out this problem on its site.
As also reported by BBC Sport, MUFC defender Harry Maguire has called on Twitter to verify the identity of its users so they can be more easily tracked down over vile language like this.
The reports also note that Chelsea striker Tammy Abraham received similar insults when he had a penalty saved in the Super Cup defeat to Liverpool.
It’s depressing to see the rise of racism of football again after the game appeared to have made some progress on this issue, which was notably a big problem back in the 1980s.
The anti-racism campaigners Kick It Out recently reported a 43% rise in racist abuse in English football last season, according to BBC Sport.