Brentford have condemned the racial abuse received by Ivan Toney following their 2-0 win over Brighton on Friday night, and have urged relevant authorities to provide ‘strong support’.
Toney scored a match-winning brace, but revealed on Saturday morning a racist message he had received from a user on Instagram. The striker did not censor the user’s name, with the culprit since setting their Instagram account to private and deactivating their Twitter account.
In a statement later on Saturday morning, Brentford said: “Last night, Ivan Toney was subjected to disgusting, racist abuse via a direct message received on social media.
“We condemn this discriminatory behaviour in the strongest possible terms. An attack on one of our players is an attack on all of us.
“Ivan will receive the full backing from the Club and from the Brentford fans who we have already seen condemning the abuse.
“We expect strong support from the police, legal authorities and from Instagram’s parent company, Meta, to ensure that the individual involved faces the full force of the law for this despicable hate crime.”
The Premier League have been running their ‘No Room For Racism’ campaign over the last two gameweeks, with players taking the knee again. Toney and teammate Yoane Wissa did not take the knee, with the former having previously claimed players were being ‘used as puppets’ and the gesture was not changing society significantly.
Credit: 90min.com
