Willian has said that racist trolls need to be severely punished after he admitted that the abuse he and his family have suffered left him afraid to check his social media accounts and considering deleting them.
The Arsenal midfielder said that it was time the football authorities and tech companies backed up their words with stronger action. He shared screenshots of abuse sent to him from two different accounts on Instagram following a 1-1 draw against Benfica in the Europa League in February. Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Naby Keïta, Sadio Mané, Patrick van Aanholt and Davinson Sánchez are among the players who have also been a target from accounts where an individual hides behind a pseudonym.
Willian said social media companies must make it compulsory for users to upload a passport or identity card to make them easily accountable for their actions. “These people, they have to pay for that,” Willian said. “If they want to criticise me, I accept that. But when they come to attack your family with those words that I cannot say here — that hurts.
“It really affects me when they say about my family. It was very difficult for me because I have a lot of friends on my phone and I was seeing a lot of horrible words against my family. After that enough is enough. You have to try something to take action against racism and online abuse. We need the authorities to do the action. The Premier league, Uefa and Fifa have to support us.”
A fortnight ago Thierry Henry, the former Arsenal forward, became the most high-profile athlete to delete Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in protest. English football’s governing bodies have united in telling Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter chief Jack Dorsey to show “basic human decency”.
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Willian, who said he thought about following Henry, has 9m followers on Instagram and 3.7million on Twitter. “We are human, I want to understand who these people think they are to come to speak like that to us,” he said. “Straight away, I want to delete my social media accounts. We do the best to help the team but we have our bad days, sometimes we are not feeling good, we have problems like everybody has, personal, families. You have a bad day and they come and say these kind of words that hurt you. Sometimes to be honest (I am afraid to look at my phone).”
Willian’s plea came before Arsenal prepare to play their Europa League quarter final, first leg tonight against Slavia Prague, who have been forced to defend Ondřej Kúdela from allegations of racism.
Glen Kamara, the Rangers midfielder, alleges Kúdela called him a “f***ing monkey” during the closing stages of Rangers’ 2-0 defeat in the Europa League round-of-16 second leg, last month. Slavia have admitted their player swore at his opponent, but deny the remark was racial.
Kúdela has been given a one-match suspension for having insulted an opponent but the allegations of racism are subject of a further investigation by Uefa. A decision might be made before Arsenal play the second leg a week today.
Arsenal look likely to need to win the Europa League to qualify for Europe next season after their 3-0 defeat by Liverpool on Saturday. Mikel Arteta said he has taken the criticism from pundits and fans on the chin and his players need to show they have a future at the club. “Sometimes a punch or a big slap in the face is a good thing to go back to reality,” Arteta said.
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“It’s just about how we take the criticism. It’s not good to get the criticism to feel guilty, because that guilt is going to be changed into fear. It’s about feeling responsible. Act and not too much talking. People who are much more introvert or extrovert show much more emotion with their body language than others, but it does not mean it does not hurt as much.”
Arsenal could be without Kieran Tierney for the rest of the season. The left back has sustained ligament damage to his left knee and will be out for up to six weeks. He suffered the injury in a tackle with James Milner on Saturday.
Arteta was cautious about his recovery. “We have to first make sure that he doesn’t need any surgery, which it doesn’t look like,” he said. “If that’s the case, the time frame will be around four to six weeks to return to training. I don’t know (if he will play again for us this season), we’re going to have to go day by day to see how Kieran is feeling, how he is reacting. When we get close to playing time and training with the team, depending where we are and how he’s feeling, we’ll make a decision.”
