Walker-Peters faces racial abuse after Man Utd draw

Southampton are in contact with police after defender Kyle Walker-Peters received racial slurs on social media following his goalless draw with Manchester United, the Premier League club announced on Monday.

Walker-Peters was targeted online after his challenge against United’s Alejandro Garnacho at Old Trafford on Sunday, forcing manager Erik ten Hag to withdraw his second-half substitute.

Garnacho, who had four goals and four assists that season, later left Old Trafford on crutches, with Ten Hag confirming he twisted his ankle.

“In February 2021, the club issued a statement regarding one of our young players who was subjected to heinous racial abuse following a game against Manchester United,” Southampton said in a statement.

“More than two years later we find ourselves in exactly the same position: disgusted and disappointed by the behavior of those who deign to abuse gamers online because of their skin colour.

“What is equally frustrating is the lack of meaningful action in these two years from the social media platforms that allow such hatred to spread and fester.”

Southampton said the messages had been relayed to Hampshire Police, while they also reported the posts to social media platforms.

“We can only hope that they will finally draw attention to what remains a major problem and that we don’t repeat those words in two years’ time,” the club added.

Meta, which owns Instagram, said they reached out to the club and removed a number of comments from the platform for breaking their rules.

“Over the past few years, we’ve introduced several ways to protect people from even experiencing abuse, including our Hidden Words feature, which allows people to filter offensive comments and DMs,” said a meta spokesperson.

“We recently started enabling this by default for people with Creator accounts. Nothing will fix this overnight, but we will continue to work to protect our community from abuse and respond to valid legal requests to assist law enforcement investigations.”

The abuse was also condemned by the English Football Association and the Premier League.

“Nobody should be confronted with abuse of this kind. We are supporting Southampton in their investigation,” the league said.