Rabbi Matondo receives racist abuse after football’s social media boycott ends

Wales international Rabbi Matondo has become the latest footballer to be subjected to racist abuse online, hours after the lifting of a social media boycott.

The 20-year-old, who is on loan at Stoke from German side Schalke, revealed he had been sent vile racist comments on Instagram.

Matondo wrote on Twitter: “Good to see the boycott changed nothing @instagram”.

Alongside the text were two examples of abuse he had received since the end of the weekend-long boycott by players, clubs and governing bodies across a range of sports on Monday night.

A Stoke spokesperson said: “The club is aware of the disgusting racial abuse Rabbi Matondo received on social media overnight and will do everything we can to help the authorities bring the perpetrator to justice.

“We will not tolerate behaviour of this nature – there is no place in society for it and we will be reporting the offending post in line with the agreed procedure the EFL has in place.”

A spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said: “The abuse sent to Rabbi Matondo is unacceptable. We do not want it on Instagram and we quickly removed the accounts that sent it.

“We recently announced that we’ll take tougher action against people breaking our rules in DMs and later this week, we’re rolling out new tools to help prevent people seeing abusive messages from strangers. No single thing will fix this challenge overnight but we’re committed to doing what we can to keep our community safe from abuse.”

Swansea striker Morgan Whittaker was targeted during the boycott, becoming the fourth player from the Championship club to be abused since February.

Swansea staged their own week-long social media blackout in early April, which was joined by fellow second-tier club Birmingham.