Football's Darkest Weekend: Racism, Rape Threats, and a Crisis?!

Racism, rape threats, and good old-fashioned death wishes: apparently, that's just another weekend in the world of Premier League and Women's Super League football. A recent BBC investigation has peeled back the curtain on the frankly horrifying levels of online abuse aimed at players and managers, and the numbers are truly staggering.

Football's Darkest Weekend: Racism, Rape Threats, ...

The investigation, which partnered with data science firm Signify, looked at social media posts during a single weekend of matches – November 8-9. What they found wasn't just garden-variety trash talk. We're talking over 2,000 abusive posts, including racist slurs, homophobic attacks, and credible threats of violence. And here's the kicker: managers are now being targeted *more* than players. Seems like no one is safe.

Eighty-two percent of the filth was spewed on X, formerly Twitter. Premier League managers like Ruben Amorim, Arne Slot, and Newcastle's Eddie Howe (I'm a fan, so this one stings a bit) were the biggest targets in the men's league. In the WSL, Chelsea and their manager Sonia Bompastor took a particularly nasty beating, accounting for half of all the recorded abuse. Disturbingly, 61% of the garbage originated from accounts within the UK and the Republic of Ireland. So much for "banter," eh?

It's easy to say "just ignore it," and some managers seem to have adopted that approach. As one manager put it, "I don't have social media so I don't see it, but I'm not stupid, I know it's there." However, that's not a solution. The sheer volume and vile nature of this abuse is beyond anything that should be considered normal or acceptable. Signify's system attempts to flag potentially abusive content, though it's admittedly imperfect; references to players' names can accidentally trigger it. But the point is, someone is trying.

Thirty-nine posts, including the ever-present monkey emojis directed at Black players and sickening rape threats, were deemed serious enough to be reported to clubs and potentially to law enforcement. Only one post made it to the police, and they apparently didn't think it was worth pursuing. That's part of the problem, isn't it? The impunity. As Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Maheta Molango rightly pointed out, "If this happened on the street, this would have criminal consequences... So why is it that online people have got this sense of impunity? We need to put an end to this." Amen to that.

While platforms like Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and X are implementing tools to block and filter abuse, and even display account locations, it’s clearly not enough. Something more systemic needs to change – both in terms of platform accountability and, frankly, in the broader societal attitudes that allow this kind of hate to fester online. It's depressing to think that some in the sport are simply resigning themselves to this abuse as inevitable, but unless we take real action, that's exactly what it will become.