Abdoulaye Doucoure subjected to “outpouring of racist abuse” online after Merseyside derby

Everton midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure was the victim of "some of the worst outpourings of abuse" ever witnessed in the Premier League, according to the league's director of content protection, Tim Cooper. 

Doucoure received thousands of racist texts and death threats following his celebration in front of Liverpool fans after James Tarkowski’s last-minute equaliser in the final Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. Tarkowski scored in the eighth minute of added time to send the home fans into a frenzy.

Doucoure received a second yellow after celebrating in front of the away fans once the referee blew the final whistle at the end of the 2-2 draw. Curtis Jones, who rushed to remonstrate against him, also saw a red as the incident escalated into a brawl with players from both camps being separated by security staff.

"When Doucoure went back to the dressing room, he noticed his Instagram account had 'lit up.' There were, by his estimate, 'thousands' of direct messages spewing the worst, most vile sort of racism. And they just kept coming for days,” an article in the i paper read.

“There was crude text abuse but also a string of gifs and emojis of monkeys and bananas. Even worse, there were death threats to him and his young family. Doucoure decided that he had to take a stand.”

The 32-year-old attended a Show Racism the Red Card event at Goodison Park recently, where he shared his experiences with around 100 school-children. Doucoure insisted on attending the meeting and speaking on his past approach to racism, he said, "I never used to speak on racism. I just tried to cope and ignore it but sometimes you need to speak on these topics and spread the message.

"I understand the frustration about the celebration I had in front of the Liverpool fans, and I accept that they can criticise and say that wasn't appropriate, but I'm surprised people use discrimination to hurt you. I received death threats, as well as my family, which is going too far.

"We know this happens every weekend for a lot of players and [now] I want to be an example on how to stand against this and send a strong message to people."

The paper further added that when Everton and Liverpool issued a joint statement condemning the abuse the next day, it triggered the situation all over again. The incident soon became a priority for the league’s online abuse team - comprising 10 individuals, including lawyers and investigators. 

“It was horrendous in Abdoulaye’s case. The volume of messages was extraordinary. They were all open messages, so he will have just seen his account ‘light up’, and the abuse was really different this time,” said Cooper.

“It used to be text-based, but Instagram is very emoji-based. It was awash with monkey and gorilla gifs and it’s the first time we’ve really seen that, and it’s really difficult to filter that out. We can look for text or emojis but it’s much more difficult with video.

“It was spiteful and obvious what was going on, so we were already working to remove posts straight away after it happened, and then we were straight into the player to offer support.”

More recently, Everton defender James Tarkowski and his family received death threats on social media following a tackle on Liverpool midfielder Alexis Mac Allister at the derby in Anfield. Tarkowski’s wife had to post on Instagram following the abuse directed at her husband and Everton and manager David Moyes were quick to condemn the situation.

 

---

Reader Comments (11)

Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer ()

How to get rid of these ads and support TW