Following Chelsea’s dramatic penalty shoot-out defeat in the UEFA Super Cup last night, striker Tammy Abraham was subjected to racial abuse online centering around his spot-kick miss that proved decisive in the shoot-out.
The center-forward was tasked with taking Chelsea’s fifth penalty which was saved by Adrian, handing Super Cup glory to the men from Anfield, but a number of unsavoury tweets soon emerged on Twitter, targetting the 21-year-old in a racist manner.
There have been a series of unsavoury incidents already this season and anti-discrimination campaigners Kick It Out were quick to condemn it, with a “call to action” for what was being done to “tackle this insidious problem”.
In a statement issued to the PA news agency, Twitter highlighted the recent ‘health update’ post earlier this year, with significant progress made when it comes to hateful conduct on the service.
“We continue to take action on any account that violates the Twitter Rules,” a Twitter spokesperson told PA.
READ MORE: Lampard has special words for Tammy Abraham after penalty heartache
“We welcome people to freely express themselves on our service, however, as outlined in our Hateful Conduct Policy, users cannot promote violence against, threaten or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity or other protected groups.
“We remain deeply committed to improving the health of the conversation on the service and in that respect we continue to prioritise the safety of our users.”
Kick It Out maintains more must be done to combat the social media trolls.
“Last night we received reports of racist abuse at Tammy Abraham on social media after Chelsea’s UEFA Super Cup match,” a Kick It Out statement read.
“Such abuse is now increasingly predictable, but no less disgusting.
“We send our support to Tammy and reiterate our call for Twitter and other social media companies to clamp down on this level of abuse. This is a call to action – we want to know what they are going to do to tackle this insidious problem.”
READ MORE: Pulisic reveals why Super Cup result was ‘harsh’ on Chelsea
The post Tammy Abraham suffers racial abuse following penalty miss – Twitter responds appeared first on teamtalk.com.
