One in five players at the 2023 Women’s World Cup received discriminatory, abusive or threatening messaging, a new report has revealed.
The findings released by Fifa and Fifpro showed 152 players were targeted on social media.
Players at the 2023 women’s tournament were 29% more likely to be targeted than those at the 2022 men’s World Cup.
“Discrimination has no place in football and no place in society,” said Fifa president Gianni Infantino.
Last year world football’s governing body Fifa partnered with players’ union Fifpro to implement a plan to protect players, coaches and officials from social media abuse during international tournaments.
They established a package of tools called the social media protection service (SMPS), which flags posts and comments and hides abusive messages from view.
It has now been used at eight Fifa tournaments in the last 12 months, with 5.1 million posts and comments in 35 languages analysed for abusive content during this year’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
The service protected 697 players and coaches actively using 2,111 social media accounts from seeing the abuse.
Some 239 active accounts held by 29 match officials and the 32 participating teams were also covered by the service.
The report said United States and Argentina players suffered the highest volume of abuse while there were 637 abusive messages linked to the final between England and Spain.
Fifa said any abuse was reported to social media platforms while account holder information was passed to the relevant member associations and law enforcement agencies.
Infantino added: “There can be no place on social media for those who abuse or threaten anyone, be that in Fifa tournaments or elsewhere.”
