Chelsea head coach Maurizio Sarri has joined England Women’s boss Phil Neville and the Football Association in condemning the social media abuse directed towards Karen Carney.
The FA on Thursday called called on the police and social media companies to help shut down online abuse after Chelsea Women midfielder Carney was subjected to sickening threats.
Sarri, asked about the issue at his weekly media conference on Friday, said: “It’s not acceptable. It’s disgusting.”
The 59-year-old admitted that he is not familiar with the use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other social media platforms.
But he praised Carney’s footballing ability after her decisive penalty in Chelsea’s Women’s Champions League win over Fiorentina on Wednesday night.
Sarri added: “I watched the last match against Fiorentina. She’s a very good midfielder, I think. She scored.”
It was Neville who highlighted the abuse 133-cap international Carney had received, sharing an Instagram post which wished “cancer, leukaemia and rape” on her.
He shared a further post on Friday directed towards an unnamed England Women international, which included a rape threat and a follow-up message suggesting it was “headline” grabbing.
Neville wrote on Thursday: “A message sent to one of my @lionesses players last night, absolutely disgraceful”. He went on to ask Instagram: “Are you going to do something about it?”
He added on Friday: “Another disgraceful awful despicable message sent to one of my @lionesses – @instagram can you do a better job at protecting my players who use your social media platform!!”
The FA is backing Neville and has demanded action.
“We are appalled and dismayed by the abuse directed towards Karen Carney on social media,” the FA said in a statement on Thursday.
“The FA takes such matters extremely seriously and we are offering our full support to Karen. The abuse of players on social networking sites is a serious concern and we call on the police and social media organisations to do everything they can to help tackle this growing problem.
“We provide all our senior England players with training, guidance and support on the use of social media and treat our duty of care in this regard with the utmost importance.”
Instagram removed the account responsible for the first messages as the company does not “tolerate threatening or abusive behaviour”.
This post was last modified on 19/10/2018