“Why we kneel”
Crystal Palace’s Patrick van Aanholt has shared an image of racist abuse he received on social media after failing to score a late opportunity against Manchester United on Wednesday night.
Van Aanholt had been one-on-one with Dean Henderson in the closing stages of the goalless draw but was unable to slide his shot past the United goalkeeper.
In a tweet sent after full-time, the 30-year-old revealed a screen grab of a message he had received on Instagram.
The message appeared to complain that the missed opportunity had cost the person sending it a bet, and – as well as asking Van Aanholt to “break his f***ing neck” – features racist abuse.
"I think we should take a knee, it shows that we care."@CPFC's @pvanaanholt discusses the Black Lives Matter movement and taking Katie Hopkins to task on Twitter pic.twitter.com/gV6Y8TdhDv
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) June 12, 2020
“Why we kneel…” Van Aanholt captioned his tweet.
The Palace defender becomes the latest footballer to be the victim of racist abuse on social media. It comes a matter of weeks after the Premier League and several other leading football organisations wrote an open letter to Facebook and Twitter calling for more rigorous punishments against accounts responsible for such abuse.
In this case, the offending account has since been removed from Instagram, with steps being taken to ensure it is not able to be reactivated after breaching the platforms rules.
