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Son-Heung Min applauded Tottenham fans after beating West Ham United
Photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
The English first division football club Tottenham Hotspur has made racist insults against its striker Son Heung-Min public on social networks and strongly condemned them.
"We were made aware of the absolutely reprehensible racist slurs against Son Heung-Min during today's game on the internet," the Premier League club said on Twitter on Sunday evening.
Spurs had previously won 2-0 (0-0) against West Ham United.
The South Korean Son scored the second goal for England captain Harry Kane's side shortly after coming on as a substitute in the 72nd minute.
Tottenham announced that they would report the insults against the former Bundesliga professional and called for consequences.
"We stand with Sonny and once again call on the social media companies and the authorities to act," it said.
On Twitter, messages with racist stereotypes about South Koreans could be read in connection with Son.
Racist insults on social media are a recurring theme in English football.
Most recently, Brentford FC had publicized and condemned racist insults against its striker Ivan Toney on social networks.
Premier League has been stepping up action against racism since 2021
With its "No Room for Racism" strategy, the league had already reacted to the recurring racist attacks in the summer of 2021 and promised that fans who make racist comments in the stadium would be banned from the stadium for the entire league.
At the same time, together with the social media platforms, they wanted to take action against online discrimination.
This was preceded by an analysis by the short message service Twitter of the online abuse against English players during the Euro 2021. The social media platform said that in the 24 hours during and after the final between England and Italy, it had received 1,622 messages with racist statements from removed from their platform.
Most of the abuse came from the UK, and only 2% of the messages were viewed more than 1,000 times by users.
In 99 percent of the accounts, the identity of the sender was publicly traceable.
see/dpa
