Ivan Toney: Brentford condemns ‘disgusting, racist abuse’ his striker has been subjected to on social media




CNN

English Premier League club Brentford released a statement condemning the “disgusting, racist abuse” their striker Ivan Toney said they received on social media after he was killed in his side’s 2-0 win against Brighton & Hove Albion had scored twice on Friday.

“I didn’t even want to post this but I woke up angry…” Toney wrote on Twitter Saturday morning, alongside screenshots of an Instagram direct message with abusive language.

In his statement, Brentford “strongly condemned this discriminatory behavior.

“An attack on one of our players is an attack on all of us. Ivan will have the full support of the club and Brentford fans, who we have already seen condemning the abuse.

“We expect strong support from the police, judicial authorities and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, to ensure the data subject faces the fullest severity of the law for this heinous hate crime.”

“Nobody should be receiving racist messages like this,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement to CNN. “We sent a message to the victim asking him to contact the police.”

A meta spokesman said in a statement to CNN: “No one should have to experience racial abuse and sending messages like this is totally against our rules.

“DMs are private spaces, meaning we can’t take action unless someone reports the message to us in the app – but we also want to help ensure people don’t have to see this abuse at all.”

“That’s why we developed our Hidden Words feature, which filters out offensive comments and DMs, and we’re working closely with football governing bodies to help players enable these tools. No one will fix this overnight, but we will continue to work to protect our community from abuse and respond quickly to valid legal requests to assist law enforcement investigations.”

Before kick-off, Brentford and Brighton players knelt to ‘show their unity against all forms of racism’ as all Premier League players do between 8th and 16th October to support the ‘No place for racism “ of the league.

The Premier League also published their own expression on Twitter and condemned “all forms of discrimination”.

“No one should be confronted with the kind of abuse that happened to Ivan Toney,” the statement said. “It has no place in football or in society. We support Ivan and the club with investigations. Football is for everyone #NoRoomForRacism.”

“The #PL will continue to support players and work with clubs to combat discriminatory behaviour,” the league added in a thread tweet.

In May, British police said they were investigating the alleged racial abuse suffered by Toney and his team-mate Rico Henry’s families during Brentford’s game against Everton in Liverpool.

Toney and Henry tweeted the allegations against the unidentified supporters after the game at Goodison Park.

“And for the man who racially abused my family, Il [sic] doing everything i can to give you the punishment you deserve,” Toney wrote at the time.