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The UK’s Football Policing Unit has received nearly 600 referrals of online abuse against English players since the start of Euro 2024. Figures revealed by Channel 4 News show spikes in offensive posts after England’s group games, with the majority of posts containing racist content or language. The UKFPU said 26 cases were being investigated.
“Approximately around 85% of the most grossly offensive posts we see are racism, followed by homophobia,” said Superintendent Mike Ankers, UKFPU’s head of investigations. “We’re still viciously using the N-word. They’re going to be pretty prominent. We’ll also get things like monkey emoticons, which will be extremely offensive in and of themselves. So we will take action.
“What we saw in 2022, which followed the 2021 missed penalties of the three black players [at the European Championship final] was a change in legislation which meant that hateful abuse online became a section one offence, allowing us to apply for a banning order.
“The banning order allows us to take away probably the only thing they enjoy, which is football, for up to 10 years, which means they can’t travel, they can’t go and watch matches.”
England’s Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jaden Sancho were targeted by racist abuse online after missing penalties against Italy three years ago and 11 people were arrested.
The UKFPU received 102 reports of online abuse following England’s Euro 2024 opener against Serbia, with 12 of these being investigated. After the second match against Denmark, 292 social media posts were forwarded, with three meeting the threshold for a police investigation. In the last group match against Slovenia, 177 posts were forwarded with 11 cases under investigation.
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The UKFPU said on Friday that six England fans had been given football banning orders linked to disturbances in Gelsenkirchen ahead of the match with Serbia on June 16.
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