Ireland star McGoldrick the latest footballer to receive 'disgusting' racist abuse on social media

Ireland star McGoldrick the latest footballer to receive 'disgusting' racist abuse on social media
Ireland and Sheffield United striker David McGoldrick, here scoring his side's first goal of the game during a recent Premier League match, is the latest high profile footballer to receive racist abuse on social media.

Republic of Ireland star David McGoldrick has become the latest high profile soccer player to be subjected to racist abuse on social media.

The Sheffield United player shared the vile message he received on Instagram which he captioned: "2020 and this is life."

McGoldrick was called an ape among other slurs, and was also told his life "defo doesnt matter!".

Sheffield United have condemned the abuse aimed at their player, who scored twice in the Blades 3-0 win over Chelsea on Saturday.

“As a club we will support David McGoldrick and will do all we can to find the perpetrator of this disgusting message,” they said in a statement.

“We will work with the relevant authorities to ensure the person behind this post is brought to justice. This cannot continue. Something needs to change,” the club added.

The Football Association of Ireland has also condemned the racist abuse aimed at McGoldrick.

An FAI spokesperson said: “The Football Association of Ireland condemns the online racist abuse aimed at our striker David McGoldrick and joins Sheffield United in offering David all the support we can give him at this time. Such behaviour is appalling and cannot be tolerated by football or society.” 

The abuse directed at McGoldrick follows the news that a 12-year-old boy has been arrested in relation to racist abuse sent to Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha.

Zaha took to Twitter to share the abuse sent to him on Instagram, with one message reading: "You better not score tomorrow you black ****."

Back in May, former Arsenal and England striker Ian Wright shared racist messages that were sent to him via Instagram.

In a post on Twitter, Wright said: "I know I'm not meant to look at them but these messages still hit me so hard man. This is a child!!! This kid has a direct line into me & is able to send this without any worry."

Following the incident, Gardaí confirmed that a male adult teenager had presented themselves at a Garda station and had been interviewed in relation to the incident.

Meanwhile, over 80 million images used to train an AI system have been pulled after researchers from University College Dublin found a connection to a string of racist terms. Abeba Birhane of UCD and the software research centre Lero uncovered how the ’80 Million Tiny Images’ dataset had been contaminated AI with racist, misogynistic and other slurs.

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