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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
National
GIUSEPPE MURO

Watford stars report online racist abuse to the police

Watford will report the racist abuse received on social media by Troy Deeney, Adrian Mariappa and Christian Kabasele to the police.

The Watford trio are the latest players to be racially abused when they were targeted following their FA Cup semi-final win over Wolves on Sunday.

Deeney on Monday closed the comments section on his Instagram account after he and his family suffered racial abuse online.

His team-mates Mariappa and Kabasele later said they had also received racist messages.

Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha posted a racially abusive message he received after his side won 1-0 at Newcastle last Saturday. The Tyneside club are working to identify who was behind the message.

The 26-year-old called on football’s authorities to do more to combat this behaviour.

He said: “It is really sad to see. I see we wear Kick It Out [clothing], different stuff like that, but I feel there needs to be something proper that scares people so they don’t just get up and decide to be racist.

“I just tend to laugh at it really and the fact that people still do it. I think social media makes it so easy for people to do it all the time.

“But it is a thing where I draw attention to it so that the culprits can get found but I just laugh at them. That’s it.”

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