According to a FIFA study, female football players face insults and threats more often than football players.

The International Football Federation (FIFA) confirmed the seriousness of the problem of abusive behavior towards female football players through a study carried out during the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand over the summer. It turned out that during it, at least every fifth athlete faced insults and threats against her on social networks.

The International Football Federation has published the results of its research conducted during the Women’s World Cup. It took place from July 20 to August 20 in Australia and New Zealand. The study focused on the issue of online abuse of players, which FIFA has long considered an important topic, and confirmed that women’s football is no better off in this regard than men’s football.

The data was obtained thanks to the SMPC system implemented by FIFA. This service, after connecting to it, blocks comments and messages on social networks, which, after verification, may be considered abusive and inappropriate for viewing. So, during the world championship, a total of 697 players used it. And it turned out that the accounts of 152 of them contained comments and messages that required blocking. At the same time, SMPS analyzed more than 5 million posts, marking 102.2 thousand of them as suspicious. In more than seven thousand cases, suspicions were eventually found to be justified.

Blocked comments and messages are of a very different nature: “discriminatory”, “threatening”, “homophobic”, “sexist”. At the same time, during the men’s World Cup, which took place at the end of last year in Qatar, participants, as FIFA calculated, still encountered them a little less often. In women, the frequency of receiving such messages was 29% higher. And in first place among the recipients were the national teams of the USA and Argentina.

At the same time, of course, a colossal share of them came in the final match, in which the Spanish team defeated the England team. Through SMPS, 637 comments and messages related to it were verified as abusive. Although even after the finale there was a surge in abuse. True, it was already connected not so much with the game and performance of the football players, but with the incident at the award ceremony, which caused an unexpectedly great resonance and unexpected consequences. We are talking about a scandal that was born from the kiss of the President of the Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, of forward Jenny Hermoso. It was equated with “harassment” by an athlete, caused heated discussion in various communities, including football, deprived Mr. Rubiales of his post and turned him into a defendant in a criminal case.

A FIFA study quotes Colombian soccer player Lacey Santos. She compares the “suffering” of “abusive” and “offensive” comments to the feelings female athletes experience after losses, and also points out that such messages can damage “mental health.” As for FIFA President Gianni Infantino, he only emphasized that there is “no place” for abuse and threats on social networks, and made it clear that he has a positive assessment of the work of SMPS, noting that in the first year since its introduction, the tool “hid” more than 400 thousand .posts

Alexey Dospehov