Manchester United’s Harry Maguire and Marcus Rashford have called on social media companies to require users to verify their identities after teammate Paul Pogba was targeted on Twitter with racial abuse.
Racially offensive tweets about Pogba were posted after his penalty kick was saved in United's 1-1 draw at Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League on Monday.
Maguire tweeted that "every account that is opened should be verified by a passport/driving license. Stop these pathetic trolls making numerous accounts to abuse people."
Even Marcus Rashford echoed similar sentiment. Rashford tweeted, “Enough now, this needs to stop @Twitter. Manchester United is a family. @paulpogba is a huge part of that family. You attack him you attack us all...”
The 20-time English champions said that they "encourage social media companies to take action in these cases."
A club statement said: “Everyone at Manchester United is disgusted by the racial abuse aimed at Paul Pogba last night and we utterly condemn it. The individuals who expressed these views do not represent the values of our great club and it is encouraging to see the vast majority of our fans condemn this on social media also.”
“Manchester United has zero tolerance of any form of racism or discrimination and a long-standing commitment to campaigning against it through our #AllRedAllEqual initiative. We will work to identify the few involved in these incidents and take the strongest course of action available to us. We also encourage social media companies to take action in these cases,” the statement read.
(With inputs on AP)
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