After Argentina defeated France on post-match penalties in the World Cup final on Sunday night in Qatar, three members of the French team were immediately subjected to racial abuse on Instagram.
Aurelien Tchouameni, Kingsly Coman, and Randal Kolo Muani received racist comments on their Instagram pages.
Kolo Muani missed a chance to win the game in the dying minutes of the match while Tchouameni and Coman both missed penalties in the shootout.
The trio received messages that included banana and monkey emojis, which have previously been used to racially abuse black players on social media.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, has reportedly denounced the abusive posts and announced that the communications had been deleted.
The said spokesperson 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 and hides offensive comments and DMs from people who don’t follow you or have only followed you recently.
“We’re in touch with the players and their teams directly, since Sunday’s final, to offer them support and help them turn on these tools.”
Coman’s club, Bayern Munich FC, have also come out to condemn the messages.
In a statement, Bayern Munich wrote: “FC Bayern strongly condemns the racist comments made towards Kingsley Coman. The FC Bayern family is behind you, King. Racism has no place in sport or our society.”
Meanwhile, Real Madrid FC’s Tchouameni has limited comments on his Instagram posts while Kolo Muani of Eintracht Frankfurt has turned them off to prevent the abuse.
