STOKE STAR’S ANGER OVER RACIST ABUSE
Stoke City star Rabbi Matondo has become the latest footballer to speak out about racist abuse on social media. Here we look at what is becoming an ugly counterpoint to the beautiful game...
FACEBOOK has removed the Instagram accounts from which Stoke City’s Rabbi Matondo and his Wales team-mate Ben Cabango were racially abused.
Winger Matondo received vile private messages featuring offensive emojis following Wales’ 1-0 friendly win over Mexico, which both players started.
The abuse prompted the 20-year-old to call on Instagram to do more to tackle racism on social media.
He wrote on Twitter: “And it continues… another week of @instagram doing absolutely nothing about racial abuse. My insta will get taken down if I post any clips from my games though… #priorities”.
Following his comments, Facebook, which owns Instagram, removed the accounts responsible and vowed to do more to combat online abuse.
A spokesman said: “We don’t want racist abuse on Instagram and have removed the accounts that sent these messages to Ben Cabango and
Rabbi Matondo this weekend.
“We have built tools that mean public figures don’t ever have to receive DMS (direct messages) from people they don’t follow and we recently announced that we’ll take tougher action when we become aware of people breaking our rules in DMS.
“This work is ongoing and we are committed to doing more. We also know these problems are bigger than us, so are working with the industry, government and others to collectively drive societal change through action and education.”
Stoke City have offered support to Matondo. A club spokesman said: “Stoke City finds racism and all forms of discriminatory behaviour completely unacceptable. There is no place in society for such abhorrent behaviour and we will assist in whatever way we can to bring the person who saw fit to abuse Rabbi to justice.”
The Football Association of Wales says it is “disgusted” by the racial abuse directed towards their players. “The FAW are in dialogue with South Wales Police to ensure this kind of abhorrent behaviour is reported and investigated,” said a statement on Twitter.
Swansea offered their “unequivocal” support to Cabango. It comes after their midfielder Yan Dhanda – who is of Indian heritage – was the subject of social media abuse following last month’s FA Cup defeat against Manchester City.
“As a football club, we are appalled by this.
No one should have to endure this type of abuse,” said Swansea city chief executive Julian Winter. “Ben is representing his country, he is a proud Welshman and it is a proud moment for he and his family.
The Wales pair join a growing list of black players who have been subjected to online abuse in recent weeks.
Manchester United quartet Anthony Martial, Axel Tuanzebe, Marcus Rashford, left, and Fred have all been targeted, with the latter saying “we cannot feed that culture” after being racially abused last weekend.
Arsenal’s former France forward Thierry Henry has described racism on social media as “too toxic to ignore” and disabled all of his accounts on Saturday following the recent instances on the platform.