Middlesbrough's on-loan winger Yannick Bolasie has hit out at the "keyboard warriors" who subjected him to online racial abuse and shared an image of a message he received on Instagram.
The 31-year-old, who is on loan from Everton, tweeted: "Something seriously wrong with people ... Keyboard warriors. Still yet to meet a person who had this energy when they saw me."
Everton condemned the incident and said they would not tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind.
"There is no room for racism in football or society. By working together, we can fight discrimination wherever it exists," the club said in a statement to Sky Sports.
"Everybody has a part to play and social media abuse should never go unreported. We also urge social media platforms to strengthen measures to prevent this kind of behaviour."
Manchester United's Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial, Arsenal's Willian and Chelsea's Reece James are among a host of players to have been subjected to online abuse recently, prompting English soccer bodies to put pressure on social media companies to tackle the problem.
Instagram last month announced new measures to deal with online abuse, including removing accounts of people who send abusive messages and developing new controls to help reduce the abuse people see.
(Reporting by Arvind Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
