Euro 2020: Online Racist Abuse of England's Penalty Takers

Timeline

1. Jul 11, 2021England lose the Euro 2020 final to Italy on penalties; Rashford, Sancho and Saka are racially abused online.
2. Jul 12, 2021The FA, the prime minister and others condemn the abuse; a mural of Rashford is defaced.
3. Jul 14, 2021The prime minister vows to ban online abusers from attending matches.
4. Aug 2021Twitter reports it removed 1,622 tweets within 24 hours of the final.
5. Dec 2021The Casey review into the final's crowd disorder reports a "collective failure."
6. Jun 29, 2022Football banning orders are extended to online hate offences.
7. Jan 31, 2024Online Safety Act offences of false and threatening communications are added to the football banning order regime.

The ethical issues

• Online abuse: harms to players and the role of platforms.
• Anonymity vs. identification: whether ID verification would help.
• Jurisdiction: abuse sent from abroad.
• Legal responses: criminal law and banning orders.
• Responsibility of clubs and governing bodies to protect players.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder	Interests & obligations
Rashford, Sancho and Saka	Safety and dignity.
Black players	Freedom from online abuse.
Social media companies	Moderation, free expression and reputation.
The FA and UEFA	Player welfare and the sport's image.
Governments and police	Enforcing laws on hate crime.
Fans	Accountability for abusers.

The case

On July 11, 2021, England played Italy at Wembley in the final of Euro 2020, delayed a year by the pandemic. It was England’s first major men’s final since 1966. The match ended 1–1 after extra time.^[1]

In the penalty shootout, late substitutes Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho missed, and Bukayo Saka, 19, had his decisive kick saved. Italy won 3–2 on penalties.^[1]

Background

The tournament had already put racism on the agenda. England’s players took the knee for racial equality before every game, and both teams did so before the final.^[1] The shootout put three young Black players at the center of the moment. Rashford hit the post, Sancho’s kick was saved, and Saka, England’s fifth taker, was stopped by Gianluigi Donnarumma.^[1] According to The Independent, within minutes of Saka’s miss his Instagram account was flooded with racist comments, including monkey emojis.^[1] Alongside the support for the defaced Rashford mural, a digital mural in Manchester honoring all three players was unveiled.^[1]

The rules and governance

The legal tools were criminal law and football regulation. Racist messages can be prosecuted in England and Wales as communications offenses, and the Metropolitan Police investigated the abuse. Police arrested four people on July 15, four days after the final.^[1] Many senders were abroad and beyond the reach of English law, which limited what prosecution alone could achieve.^[1] Football banning orders let courts bar convicted offenders from attending matches. The 2022 change extended them to online hate offenses connected to football.^[3][4]

Platform rules were the other layer. Social media companies enforce their own terms of service, removing posts and suspending accounts. Their reports after the final showed both the scale of the abuse and the limits of the idea that requiring identity verification would solve it.^[2] UEFA, meanwhile, punished the FA for the disorder at Wembley by ordering England to play a home match behind closed doors and fining it €100,000, with a second closed-doors match suspended for two years.^[1][6] The charges covered pitch invasion, thrown objects, disturbances during the national anthems and a “lack of order or discipline inside or around the stadium.” A firework charge was dropped.^[6]

The abuse

Within minutes, the three Black players were targeted with racist language and emojis on their social media accounts.^[1] The FA said it was “appalled,” and the team’s manager, the prime minister and Prince William, the FA’s president, condemned the abuse.^[1] A mural of Rashford in Manchester was defaced, though police later said they did not believe the vandalism was racial. Local people covered it in messages of support.^[1]

Rashford apologized for his miss but said he “won’t apologise” for who he was. Sancho said “hate will never win.” Saka said he “knew instantly the kind of hate” he would receive.^[1]

Platforms and police

Police received 600 reports of racist comments and judged 207 to be criminal; most of those identified came from overseas.^[1] Twitter said it removed 1,622 tweets in the 24 hours after the final. It said 99% of the accounts it permanently suspended were identifiable, so identity verification “would have been unlikely to prevent the abuse.” It also said the UK was “by far” the largest country of origin for the abusive tweets it removed.^[2] The Professional Footballers’ Association had pressed platforms to do more, and clubs and athletes had staged a social media boycott earlier that year.^[2]

Legal changes

The prime minister promised to ban online abusers from matches.^[1] The change came through section 190 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. It added new “relevant offences” to the football banning order regime.^[7] These include sending a message with intent to cause distress under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and improper use of a public communications network under the Communications Act 2003. Both apply only where the court states that the offence was aggravated by hostility such as racial hostility, and declares that it related to a football match, a football organisation or a person connected with one.^[7] The new provisions took effect in England and Wales in June 2022, and prosecutors said they would seek banning orders where available.^[3][4] The Online Safety Act 2023 later extended the list to its new false communications and threatening communications offences, on the same conditions of hostility and a football connection, from January 31, 2024.^[8] The law reaches abuse aimed at a player online, not only conduct at a ground. But it applies only to offenders who can be identified and prosecuted in England and Wales.^[1][7]

Wembley disorder

The final was also marred by thousands of ticketless fans trying to force their way into Wembley.^[1] The FA commissioned an independent review led by Baroness Louise Casey. It found that around 100,000 people traveled to Wembley that day and that about 2,000 got into the stadium without tickets, often by targeting disabled-access pass gates. About 400 were ejected.^[5] Some fans pulled apart emergency fire doors, and a crowd of about 6,000 stayed outside trying to break in.^[5] Casey called the day a “near miss”: “we were close to fatalities and/or life-changing injuries for some, potentially many, in attendance.”^[5] She found that many events were foreseeable and that there was “a collective failure to plan for the worst case scenario.”^[5]

The review tied the disorder to the racist abuse. “The outpouring of vile racist abuse that followed in the days after only made this worse,” Casey wrote. “Why on earth should black footballers be expected to continue to play for their country amid racist abuse from their own countrymen?”^[5] She noted that racist abuse aimed at England’s Black players and at Italians, inside the stadium and online, would have drawn much more serious penalties in other settings such as an airport, and that there was “a surprising lack of enforcement mechanisms” in football.^[5] She welcomed the government’s commitment on banning orders for online racist offences. She also urged “greater urgency” on the Online Safety Bill as “a real opportunity to stiffen penalties for racism and hate speech online.”^[5]

Aftermath

Police arrested 86 people over the violence and disorder around the final, 53 of them at Wembley.^[1] Foreign newspapers contrasted the fans’ conduct with the image Southgate’s squad had built.^[1]

The core dilemma

Online abuse of athletes is easy to send and hard to stop. Platforms say they remove content and suspend accounts; critics say they profit from engagement while abuse spreads. How should responsibility be shared among platforms, governments, sports bodies and users?

Competing values

• Free expression vs. protection from abuse: open platforms against hate speech.
• Anonymity vs. accountability: privacy against identifying offenders.
• National law vs. global platforms: enforcement across borders.
• Player welfare vs. public profile: athletes’ visibility against exposure to abuse.

Strongest arguments

For stronger platform duties: platforms design systems that amplify content and have the tools to detect abuse. They should act faster and do more to prevent repeat offenders.

For shared responsibility: platforms cannot prevent all abuse, and much comes from individuals subject to criminal law. Education, prosecution and sports bodies all have roles.

Applying the frameworks

Rights

A rights lens centers on the players’ right to equal dignity and to do their jobs without racial abuse. It also weighs freedom of expression, which does not protect threats or racist abuse, and privacy concerns raised by proposals for identity verification. Twitter’s evidence that most abusers were identifiable suggests that verification would add little protection while costing anonymous users who rely on it for safety.

Ethics of care

The care lens focuses on three young men, one of them 19, who had just experienced a public sporting failure and then received racist abuse. It asks what the FA, clubs and platforms owed them in protection and support. The community’s response to the defaced mural, covering it with messages of support, showed care in action.

Utilitarian

Consequentialists ask which measures reduce harm most: faster platform moderation, criminal prosecution, banning orders, education or design changes. Each has costs and limits, especially when many abusers are abroad. The lens favors combining measures and evaluating their effects, not symbolic responses.

Walk it through: the Simple Decision Model

1. Spot the issue. You are a social media company’s head of trust and safety for the UK on the night of July 11, 2021. The stakeholders include the three players, their families, other users, the FA, police, regulators and the public. The codes in play are your platform’s rules, UK criminal law and emerging online safety regulation.
2. Gather facts. What do you know about the volume and origin of abusive posts? Where are your detection systems weakest, for example with emojis used as slurs?
3. Test options. Options: (a) remove posts as they are reported; (b) proactively filter replies to the players’ accounts and suspend repeat offenders; (c) also share evidence with police and publish a transparency report. Weigh harm reduction against free expression and privacy.
4. Check codes and law. Are you applying your rules consistently? Are you preserving evidence lawfully for any criminal inquiry?
5. Decide and document. Record the actions taken, data shared with police and gaps found in your systems.
6. Communicate and follow up. Communicate directly with the players’ representatives, explain your actions publicly, and commit to specific improvements with deadlines.

What’s settled and what’s contested

• Settled: the abuse; police and platform responses; the 2022 banning order change.
• Contested: where most abuse came from; whether identity verification would help; how much responsibility platforms bear.

Why this case matters

The Euro 2020 abuse showed how a single sporting moment can expose athletes to a flood of hate. It shaped debate over online safety and the protection of players.

Key terms

Duty of care

The responsibility of coaches, organizations and institutions to protect the health, safety and well-being of those in their charge. It is not a license for total control.

Institutional accountability

Structures that make a sport organization explain its decisions and face consequences: clear authority, transparency, appeals, independent oversight and enforcement.

Stakeholders

Everyone with something at stake in a decision: athletes, coaches, parents, officials, fans, employees, sponsors, media, communities and regulators, including the less visible ones.

Controls

Concrete safeguards that make ethics operational: training, disclosure forms, testing, monitoring, hotlines. Ethics needs principles, process and controls.

Definitions from the Ethics Cases glossary.

Discussion questions

1. Who bears primary responsibility for online abuse of athletes: platforms, governments, sports bodies or users?
2. Twitter said ID verification would not have prevented most of the abuse. What other measures might work?
3. Police found most criminal messages came from abroad, while Twitter said the UK was the largest single source. How should this affect the response?
4. Should online abusers be banned from attending matches? What are the limits of that approach?
5. What can teams do to prepare and protect players before high-pressure moments?

Sources

1. UEFA Euro 2020 final — Wikipedia
2. Social media abuse: Twitter says UK 'by far' main origin of comments after Euro 2020 final — BBC Sport
3. Football banning orders extended to include online hate offences — BBC Sport
4. Football Related Offences and Football Banning Orders — Crown Prosecution Service
5. The Baroness Casey Review: An independent review of events surrounding the UEFA Euro 2020 Final (Dec. 2021) — The Football Association
6. Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body decisions, meetings of 14 & 18 October 2021 — UEFA
7. Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, section 190 (Football banning orders: relevant offences) — legislation.gov.uk (The National Archives)
8. Online Safety Act 2023, Schedule 14, Part 1 — legislation.gov.uk (The National Archives)