The Dutch Football Association (KNVB) has reported online racist abuse suffered by three of their players, who missed their penalty kicks in the 1-1 (3-2 on penalties) defeat against Morocco at the World Cup round of 32. Justin Kluivert, Quinten Timber, and Crysencio Summerville all missed their shots and the Netherlands were eliminated from World Cup.
After the match, the three players faced a wave of racist, discriminatory, and abusive messages on social media, and all three had to turn off comments on their social media accounts to prevent further insults. The KNVB responded filing a report to Meld. Online Discriminatie, the official Dutch reporting centre for online hate speech and discrimination, who will now determine if the comments are a criminal offence, leading to a formal complaint with the Public Prosecution Service.
"Football has the power to unite millions of people from all backgrounds, while discrimination only divides them. That is fundamentally incompatible with everything the sport stands for", said the KNVB in a statement.
NLTimes reports that this isn't the first time this happens, remembering that Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka were also targeted with racist abuse following missed penalties at UEFA Euro 2020 final, held in 2021, when England lost to Italy on penalties.
