Aurelien Tchouameni, Kingsley Coman and Randal Kolo Muani were racially abused with vile messages on social media following France’s World Cup final defeat to Argentina… as Instagram claim they have ‘removed the posts’
Three France players were racially abused on social media after their World Cup final defeat to Argentina.
Aurelien Tchouameni, Kingsley Coman and Randal Kolo Muani, who all featured in Sunday’s final, were subjected to vile messages on their accounts, as reported by The Athletic.
Tchouameni and Coman both missed penalties in the shootout, while Kolo Muani missed a chance to win the game in extra-time.
Aurelien Tchouameni (left) and Randal Kolo Muani (right) suffered racial abuse on social media after following France’s World Cup final defeat in a penalty shootout to Argentina on Sunday
The trio received messages that included banana and monkey emojis.
Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, condemned the abusive posts and said the messages had been removed.
A spokesperson for Meta told The Athletic: ‘We don’t want racist abuse on Instagram, and we’ve removed the disgusting comments for breaking our rules.
‘We also want to help protect people from having to see this abuse in the first place, which is why we’ve developed Hidden Words, a feature that filters offensive comments and DMs, and Limits, which hides comments and DMs from people who don’t follow you, or only followed you recently.
Kingsley Coman (right) also suffered racial abuse following his penalty miss against Argentina
‘We’re in touch with players and their teams directly, including since yesterday’s final, to offer them support and help them turn on these tools.’
Real Madrid’s Tchouameni has limited comments on his Instagram posts. Kolo Muani of Eintracht Frankfurt has turned them off. Coman, of Bayern Munich, is still accepting comments.
In a statement posted later, Bayern Munich wrote: ‘FC Bayern strongly condemn the racist comments made towards Kingsley Coman. The FC Bayern family is behind you, King. Racism has no place in sport or our society.’
The abuse received by the French players is similar to what occurred following England’s loss to Italy on penalties in the final of Euro 2020 last year.
After that game Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, who all missed penalties, received racist abuse online.
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