◤Premier League◢ Southampton defender Kyle Walker-Peters racially abused following the club's match against Manchester United over injuring Alejandro Garnacho..

2023-03-13 18:04

◤Premier League◢ Southampton defender Kyle Walker-Peters racially abused following the club




Manchester Evening News, The Independent, Sky Sports, The Athletic and many other domestic British media reported on Monday evening in Asia time that, following Manchester United's 0-0 draw with Southampton in the matchday 27 of the 2022/23 Premier League season, many fans of the former flocked to the personal social media account of England international defender Kyle Walker-Peters to racially abuse and cyberbully him.


According to reports, after the game, more than 400 Manchester United fans from the African continent, Spain, Argentina, Indonesia and Malaysia flocked into Walker-Peters' personal Instagram social media account and left him hundreds of comments. Most of them includes monkey emojis which abuse his skin colour and race.


This was further compounded by the fact that Walker-Peters tackled Argentina U20s international winger Alejandro Garnacho towards the end of the second half, causing the latter to be injured and had to be substituted. This no doubt became part of the main reason why disgusted Manchester United racially abused and cyberbullied Walker-Peters. Among them, the very disgusting comments included wishing Walker-Peters to be tackled and permanently disabled, wishing the player and Southampton went bankrupt together after they were relegated, and an extreme Indonesian supporter even cursed Walker-Peters' family as pigs and his mother as a prostitute.


Due to the seriousness of the situation, The Athletic revealed that Southampton lodged police report on the incident, and even contacted Instagram to help ban Manchester United fans from leaving comments. The signs of cyberbullying have diminished by the time of writing, and rational fans of Southampton and other clubs have left a lot of encouraging message to the player, and urged him not to be affected by these vicious Manchester United fans.


The 25-year-old Walker-Peters joined Southampton on a loan with an option to buy basis at the end of January 2020, and his ownership was bought out in July of the same year.


This season, Walker-Peters has made 26 appearances for the Premier League rock-bottom sides in all competitions and scored 1 goal.