Two top players of Ghanaian heritage in the English Premier League, Mario Barwuah Balotelli of Liverpool and Arsenal's Danny Nii Ayi Welbeck are the most abused players in the world's most popular league, a study has shockingly revealed.
Sport’s Anti-discrimination group Kick It Out carried out a wide-ranging and important study on social media abuse, and produced the shocking results.
With most Premier League players, and all clubs now a presence on both Facebook and Twitter (plus Instagram), the level of abusive trolling has escalated in recent years.
The phenomenon of anonymously abusing people is one of the sad and depressing drawbacks to the generally positive soical media experience, and clubs are now having to put up with all kinds of hate, not just the players.
Kick It Out’s study has unearthed 134,400 abusive posts directed at Premier League players and clubs this season, which equates t 1 abusive mention every 2.6 minutes.
Racism accounts for 28% of all abusive posts, so it’s perhaps no surprise to learn that the two most targeted players, Mario Balotelli and Danny Welbeck, are also black, and hence from a racial minority group that it still depressingly prejudiced in the game.
50-52% of abusive posts aimed at both of those players are of racial nature, which again shows how linked racism is with online abuse.
Liverpool's Mario Balotelli has emerged as the most abused player in social media in the Premier League.
Trolling has become an increasing problem and anti-discrimination group Kick It Out has revealed there have been 130,000 abusive posts in the top flight.
Chelsea were the most targeted club but Italian striker Balotelli received more than 6,000 more abusive posts than any other player with 50 per cent racially motivated.
"The level of abuse is truly staggering," said Kick It Out director Roisin Wood.
"We must do all we can as a collective to protect those who are on the receiving end of discriminatory abuse.
"This research shows the true extent of the issue we are dealing with. So far this season, we have received 140 complaints relating to football-based hate crime on social media, yet we can see from these findings that over 134,000 discriminatory posts have occurred just in relation to the Premier League.
"It is a huge volume to be looking at addressing but we must confront the problem head on."
According to the figures there is an abusive mention every 2.6 minutes with race the biggest type of discrimination (28%) followed by gender (25%), sexual orientation (19%), disability (11%), anti-Semitism (9%) and other (8%).
Chelsea emerge as the most targetted club, closely followed by Liverpool.
Read the entire shocking study on the BBC.