The beautiful game has been left reeling by a shocking scandal that's marred the World Cup - a 'significant increase' in online racist abuse, according to FIFA's social media protection service (SMPS). The staggering figures are a wake-up call for football fans everywhere: 89,000 abusive posts were detected across the group stage of the tournament, a whopping 13-fold rise from the 6,700 vile comments identified at the last World Cup in Qatar.
This disturbing trend is not just a blip - it's a concerning direction of travel. With more matches than ever before (72 compared to 48 in 2022), you'd expect a slight increase in abuse, but the scale of this rise is stark. Racism accounted for a staggering 11% of all online hate speech detected, up from 8% four years ago - and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The SMPS has been working tirelessly to detect and root out these abhorrent comments, scanning over six million posts and comments (a 33% increase on previous years) to identify around 225,000 for human review. And it's paid off: around 1,000 accounts are now under investigation, while a massive 181,000 hateful comments have been hidden from public view in an attempt to stem the tide of online hate.
The players themselves are not immune - just ask Justin Kluivert, Quinten Timber and Crysencio Summerville of the Netherlands national team. The three players were subjected to torrent of racist abuse on social media following their penalty shootout defeat to Morocco, with their personal details being targeted online.