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PFA asks players to send evidence of online racist abuse

ADRIAN DENNIS / AFP / Getty

Players who are victims of online racist abuse have been urged to forward the posts to the Professional Footballers' Association.

The PFA will then submit the evidence to Mims Davies - who serves as the minister for sport and civil society - the Football Association, anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out, and other leading football figures at a meeting in May.

The players' union describes the move as "the next stage of the #Enough campaign," following last Friday's 24-hour social media boycott by players and some clubs.

"We are preparing to take our anti-racism message to government and social networks and have asked members to submit any evidence of racist abuse received online to an email address set up specifically for this purpose," the PFA explained via Twitter.

"We will spend the next few weeks collating the player’s abuse as evidence of the scale and impact of the problem. This will be used to demonstrate the severity of the issue to the Sports Minister, as well as Facebook/Instagram and Twitter.

"The response we receive at those meetings will determine the next steps of the campaign, but we will continue to update our members of campaign progress publicly."

There have been several incidents of racist abuse during the 2018-19 season. Raheem Sterling, Danny Rose, and Callum Hudson-Odoi have spoken out after being victimized while playing, and a banana skin was thrown onto the pitch when Arsenal's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored in December's north London derby.

Ashley Young, Troy Deeney, and many other luminaries in the game have been subjected to racism on social media.

Manchester City's Sterling has been a prominent voice in the fight against racism. He accused sections of the media of helping "fuel racism" through their coverage of black footballers in an Instagram post in December.

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