Recently, FIFA did a survey on which players face the most abusive speech and comments online. The report of that survey shocked everyone.
It’s been seen that most of the abusers are from players’ own countries. Social media services previously said they will take against this abuser but the results are still zero. Social media organisers failed to keep their promises. The survey report showed that Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Liverpool’s boss Mohamed Salah are the biggest victims of online abuse.
FIFA made that report based on the time of the 2020 Euro Cup and the 2021 African Nation’s League. FIFA provide provides this report after surveying more than 400,000 social media posts during the time of those tournament finals. After losing the Euro Cup, England’s two black footballers Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka faced harassment most of the time. They both miss the penalty shot in the final.
Besides that survey, another report showed that one per cent of football-related posts on Twitter is harassing. 55 per cent of the player who took part in Euro and Nation’s final league somehow experienced harassment. In AFCON, Mohammed Salah’s had to deal with amusement highest time.
In most cases, harassment messages were related to racism. After England’s defeated by Italy- 78 per cent of the abusive talk was related to either racism or homosexuality. Jadon Sancho’s name came in the number three on the victim list after Rashford and Saka. He also missed his penalty shot on that day.
In the AFCON tournament, Salah’s team Egypt lost to Senegal. After the loss, both Salah and Sadio Mane faced huge criticism and abusive comments. They received harassment-related talk cause of their religion.
FIFA’s Steps against their player harassment:
FIFA is hoping that pressurising social media to take action against abusers will reduce this condition. Then people will think about saying anything bad to anyone.
But unfortunately, social media are so careless about this. 87% of harassing comments and post is still on social media. They claimed that it’s hard to identify who is saying this kinda thing. More heartbreaking news is abusers are most of the time players’ countrymen, not random foreigners.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said, “Our responsibility is to guard our soccer, and that begins with the gamers who carry a lot of pleasure and happiness to all of our hearts by their exploits in the sector of play.”
“Sadly, there’s a development growing the place a proportion of posts on social media channels directed in the direction of gamers, coaches, match officers and the groups themselves isn’t acceptable, and this type of discrimination – like every type of discrimination – has no place in soccer.”
“With the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and upcoming FIFA World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2023 on the horizon, FIFA and FIFPRO recognise it is very essential to make a stand and to incorporate what’s monitored on social media with what’s already being monitored within the stadiums. We would like our actions to talk louder than our phrases and that’s the reason we’re taking concrete measures to deal with the issue immediately.”
