Durban — Kingsley Coman, Aurelien Tchoumeni and Kolo Muani have all been victims of racist abuse from French supporters following their World Cup final defeat.
Muani, who plays for Eintracht Frankfurt in the German Bundesliga missed a chance in the 123rd minute while Bayern Munich’s Coman and Tchoumeni of Real Madrid both missed penalties as Les Bleus went down 4-2 on penalties to Argentina.
The trio has reportedly resorted to restricting the comment sections on their individual Instagram accounts after receiving a barrage of monkey and banana messages.
Meta, the owners of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, condemned the abusive posts and confirmed that they had since removed the disruptive messages.
A spokesperson for Meta told The Athletic: “We don’t want racist abuse on Instagram, and we’ve removed the disgusting comments for breaking our rules.
“We also want to help protect people from having to see this abuse in the first place, which is why we’ve developed Hidden Words, a feature that filters offensive comments and DMs, and Limits, which hides comments and DMs from people who don’t follow you, or only followed you recently.
“We’re in touch with players and their teams directly, including since yesterday’s final, to offer them support and help them turn on these tools.”
The latest eruption of abuse towards black footballers in Europe comes a year after the English duo of Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford both missed penalties for the Three Lions at in the Euro 2021 final and were thereafter subjected to similar abuse by a section of English football fans.
