Manchester United’s Paul Pogba a target of racial abuse following penalty miss

After his decisive penalty miss on Monday against Wolves, Manchester United’s Paul Pogba was the target of racial abuse on social media.

While social media can be helpful in many ways, such as in starting movements or spreading important news, it can also be an extremely harmful, open community, who’s members often fail to understand the full consequences of their actions, as they hide behind fake accounts or fake profile pictures. For celebrities and athletes, social media can be an everyday obstacle, and Manchester United’s Paul Pogba has experienced this first-hand this week.

With United level 1-1 with Wolves on Monday, Pogba made a superb run into the box with the ball, and was tripped up by Conor Coady, winning a penalty. After haggling for the penalty-taking rights with Rashford for a brief moment, Pogba stepped up, and saw his shot saved by Rui Patricio. The score would stay the same as United missed out on a good opportunity to pick up 3 points at a tough Molyneux Stadium.

While Pogba will be kicking himself for missing the penalty, a mistake does not give the public any right to abuse Pogba in a racist manner. Unfortunately, that is what happened on Monday evening, as a flurry of racially abusive tweets towards the Frenchman went out, mostly from accounts known as “football twitter” accounts, where people hide behind accounts dedicated to certain footballers, in the assumption that their identity will be untraceable.

Unfortunately for these people, that is not true.

Police have gotten involved in issues like this before, and it is likely that some of those who sent out these tweets on Monday will have a knock on their door from the local police department this week, despite believing their account is anonymous and tweeting racially abusive things for attention or laughs. It simply isn’t worth the consequences.

Manchester United released a statement on Tuesday, condemning the abuse towards Pogba and pleading with social media companies to tighten their rules on this type of behaviour. Several Manchester United players, including Harry Maguire and Marcus Rashford, tweeted out their support of Pogba, and their disgust at the abuse.

It is likely that we haven’t heard the end of this saga, and it is likely that incidents like this will unfortunately happen in the future, as social media becomes more and more powerful.