England players were bombarded with 12,500 hate messages on social media during Euro 2020, despite this being the country’s most successful tournament for 55 years, Sportsmail can reveal.
The vile abuse was aimed directly at players, through Twitter and Instagram, and contains comments about race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, as well as extreme personal abuse and threats of harm, including to family members.
The analysis from Crisp, a company that works with top flight football clubs across Europe and the Premier League, included the whole England squad and indicates the extent of the problem of online abuse now facing players.
The level of abuse is especially shocking since the Three Lions passed through the group stages untroubled, thrashed Ukraine 4-0 in Rome and only conceded their first goal in a 2-1 semi-final win over Denmark, before succumbing to a very strong Italy side in the final, on penalties.
The treatment of England players has come into sharp focus after Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were targeted by racists following their penalty misses for England against Italy in the Euro 2020 showpiece.
England were defeated 3-2 in the shootout in their first major tournament final in 55 years, following a 1-1 draw at Wembley on Sunday.
Despite their best efforts and obvious disappointment, the trio were almost immediately targeted and on Instagram and Twitter.
There has been widespread condemnation, including from players and team mates, the Duke of Cambridge, who is the honorary president of the FA, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The PM told social media companies they must ‘up their game' over the racist abuse of England's penalty takers. He said there is an ‘urgent need for action' after the disgraceful trolling.
Today, the number of people who have signed an online petition calling for people guilty of racist abuses to be banned from football grounds passed one million.
While England’s penalty takers have been subject to appalling treatment in recent days, it is now clear that a torrent of abuse has been directed at the squad during the four weeks of the tournament.
Crisp, which previously presented research on online abuse to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, undertook the analysis on behalf of Sportsmail, and found the hate was posted by 10,000 abusive accounts.
It has been assessed by the company as breaching the rules set by the social media companies and underlines the need for concerted action against the perpetrators.
However, while the number of abusive accounts is high, it equates to only three percent of all users posting to the players’ accounts, which gives Crisp confidence that it can have an impact on the problem by working with the big tech firms.
Crisp uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to help identify what it calls, ‘bad actors’ and their content and then employs highly-trained staff to assess the risks and threats being made.
‘We are seeing it is a small percentage of users who are posting all of the toxic, abusive, hateful comments to these players,’ said David Hunter, vice president for sales in the sports and entertainment sector of Crisp, which provides early warning risk intelligence for its clients.
‘There is a significant volume with more than 10,000 bad actors identified. It is key that the platforms focus on the actors behind the abusive and toxic behaviour, because this problem cannot be tackled by dealing with individual pieces of content or attempting to filter single comments.
‘These actors need to be removed from the platforms and kept off them.’
However, Hunter describes a ‘cat and mouse game’ in which determined abusers constantly try to outwit automated filters and detection technology and change their behaviour to maintain the abuse.
Hunter said it is not unusual for social media accounts to be set up and the abuse to begin immediately before they are then identified and shut down.
Football authorities, including the FA, have called on the social media companies to improve verification of accounts and do more to prevent abusive people re-registering for new accounts (see below).
Crisp says it helps to protect players and clubs, as well as other figures in public life, from hate by highlighting abusive accounts to the social media platforms.
It also works with other organisations to unmask abusive users so they are identified in the real world and subject to consequences for their online actions.
Hunter says he recognises the challenge faced by the big tech companies that remove some abuse using automated systems, but struggle to respond to the deluge of user reports.
‘We know that it is difficult for relying on user reports,’ said Hunter. ‘They can be inaccurate and they come in huge volumes, so having specialist companies and trusted partners can be helpful in tackling this.
‘We need to align what happens in football grounds and public spaces with what is happening in social media communities. The same rules need to apply.’
Crisp has identified online abusers, who often operate across different platforms and send hate to a wide range of people, from other internet users, to politicians, actors or public figures, as well as footballers.
It was revealed today that Saka, Rashford and Sancho will be asked by the Football Association whether they want to see any of those who posted racist abuse prosecuted.
Their views will be passed to investigating officers.
Police and the CPS may still charge suspects even if the footballers do not want criminal cases to go ahead.
It came as the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) said Instagram had taken down just six of 106 accounts reported by users for sending racial abuse to the players.
The i reports it also allowed 42 comments likening the three black players to monkeys, 17 posts containing the 'N-word' remain on the platform.
Meanwhile, a children's football coach from Worcestershire was last night arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.
Nick Scott, 50, had previously denied posting racist tweets about Marcus Rashford, claiming that his account had been hacked.
Separately police are investigating claims made by a Savills employee that his Twitter account had been hacked after the upmarket estate agent suspended him over a vile racist tweet posted about black England footballers.