FA demand police action over Carney abuse
THE FA are calling on the police to stop abuse of players online after England international Karen Carney received sickening and obscene messages. Carney, 31, shared the comments, sent to her directly via Instagram, and England women’s manager Phil Neville highlighted the issue yesterday. The first of the messages, sent by user ‘dzo09’ at 9.22pm on Wednesday, read: ‘How many chances you need to score in second half stupid bitches.’ It was followed by ‘I wish you cancer and leukemia’ and another disgusting, sexual remark. The first post appears to relate to the Women’s Champions League last-16 tie between Chelsea and Fiorentina on Wednesday. Carney scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot in the eighth minute but Chelsea were unable to add to their lead ahead of the second leg in Italy in two weeks’ time. Carney, capped 133 times for England, shared the messages and wrote: ‘Wow some people...’ An FA statement last night read: ‘We are appalled and dismayed by the abuse directed towards Karen Carney on social media. The FA take such matters extremely seriously and we are offering our full support to Karen. ‘The abuse of players on social networking sites is a serious concern and we call on the police and social media organisations to do everything they can to help tackle this growing problem. ‘We provide our senior England players with training, guidance and support on the use of social media and treat our duty of care in this regard with the utmost importance.’ Neville shared a screenshot of the posts with his 447,000 Instagram followers, writing: ‘A message sent to one of my @lionesses players last night absolutely disgraceful — @instagram are you going to do something about it!!!!!’ Instagram user ‘dzo09’ is a private account but features the name Nikola Nikolic. An Instagram spokesperson told BBC Sport: ‘We do not tolerate threatening or abusive behaviour and the account that sent these messages has been removed from Instagram.’ CREWE ALExANDRA have stated that youth coach Carl Everall’s suspension is for a safeguarding issue ‘totally unconnected to the club’. The FA have been notified and an investigation into Everall, Crewe’s head of foundation, is ongoing.