Racist comments, savage abuse, sometimes even death threats – athletes who use social media with their own profile often see themselves exposed to sheer hatred from other users. There are hardly any moral boundaries. In the apparent anonymity of the Internet and social media, numerous users let their (hate) feelings run free. “After the majority of games, I get racist messages on Instagram,” said Borussia Dortmund’s Jude Bellingham in an interview with CNN last summer, not addressing a new issue.
English football suspended all social media activity for a full weekend in April 2021 to address the growing problem of racist messages being sent to black players. In a joint campaign, the clubs and the association decided not to tweet and post via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other channels in order to take a stand against hate and discrimination on the internet.
It didn’t help much, as Bellingham’s statement shows more than a year later. After the postponed EURO 2020 final in July 2021, the three black England players Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho who missed out on penalties against Italy were racially abused online. The same thing happened last December when Bayern Munich’s Kingsley Coman missed from the point for France against Argentina in the World Cup final.
hate speech and death threats
The problem of hate messages and cyberbullying has also existed in German professional football for a long time – and it does not only affect black players. Two years ago, Toni Kroos, Niklas Süle and many other professionals joined an initiative that was supposed to hold up a mirror to the haters on the internet. In a video, the players read out messages that they had received themselves via Twitter or other channels. Sentences that the sender would probably never dare to say to the players in person. “We appreciate your opinion. But hate is not an opinion. Behind every screen there is a person,” is the message of the spot, which also addressed the operators of the platforms to take more action against hate messages and not to grant the senders anonymity.
The video is from February 2021 – but not much has changed on social networks in the past two years. Second division goalkeeper Andreas Luthe recently received extremely tasteless news after his good performance for 1. FC Kaiserslautern in the game against Hannover 96.
Luthe made the hostilities public and then received a lot of encouragement from all sides, including Hanover. There the fans showed their solidarity with Luthe. The Hannover 96 association got in touch and promised to help investigate and identify the authors of the hate messages.
Player consultant: Players perceive salary as compensation for pain and suffering
Players’ advisor Stefan Backs sums up just how big the problem of cyberbullying in professional sport has become: “Professional footballers have to live with this kind of hatred. Many see their salary as compensation for pain and suffering.” He knows that from many conversations. Threats against the family feel the players as particularly bad. “They say if it hits me – okay. But they have children who go to school or kindergarten. They get bullied there too. Dealing with professional footballers in public is sometimes underground. Hardly anyone is aware of that.” Footballers are usually particularly affected because many are still so young
Back’s agency represents, among others, Schalke goalkeeper Ralf Fährmann, coach André Breitenreiter, who has just been released from TSG Hoffenheim, but also goalkeeper Alexander Nübel, who is currently on loan from FC Bayern to AS Monaco. When the goalkeeper moved from FC Schalke 04 to Munich in 2020, a veritable shitstorm broke out over the player and his advisor, which is still being rekindled to this day, says Backs: “It hasn’t calmed down yet. It was special in the first year terrible.”
Goalkeeper Alexander Nübel was severely insulted for moving from Schalke to Bayern
Nübel and Backs themselves received death threats. The player agent’s car was vandalized. How do athletes cope with this? “You get dulled over time. The sad truth is that players learn to deal with that,” explains Backs. “But honestly, you’re still stunned. Because there’s so much.”
Goalkeeper Nübel blocked the comment function on his social media accounts. Player advisor Backs personally called the people who harassed him online with their real names and called the police. “But basically very little came out of it and, above all, it starts all over again the next time. Then it’s different again,” he says. “This phenomenon of hate on the Internet is an underground phenomenon,” one notices how much anger and frustration slumbers in some people.
Sports psychologist: Athletes can convert hate
The impact of these messages is great, making them public is a good strategy, explains Marion Sulprizio from the Psychological Institute of the Cologne Sport University in an interview with DW: “Then you also realize that there are a lot of people who support you and it’s not just these – I would say bad, criminal spirits that are mostly in the minority.”
Player advisor Stefan Backs
You can take advantage of the insults. “You can also draw an activation from the hate that can help. You can practice that with different strategies.” This includes exercises of tension and relaxation, mobilization procedures, breathing exercises or mind control. “That you don’t say to yourself how badly they threaten me, but say: I’m so good that they have to threaten me because of it. This can result in a kind of positive reinterpretation.”
Stress resistance can be learned. This works differently depending on the type. “Many players withdraw before important games, listen to certain music and activate or calm down.” She welcomes the fact that sports psychologists are now a matter of course for almost every team, because: “It’s not like someone can say: nothing works for me. I don’t accept that, because we always find a strategy like someone can change their own thoughts, their own activation.”
Support from trade unions, clubs and sports psychologists
There is support for affected players in Germany from the club, from consultants and psychologists, but also from the players’ union VDV, the lobby of football professionals working in Germany. In this area, the VDV offers various types of assistance, explains Managing Director Ulf Baranowsky to DW. The range of services offered by the VDV ranges from legal advice and psychological support to training courses on the subject of media skills. “Of course, the issue also has a political dimension,” said Baranowsky. “Here, the legislature and law enforcement agencies in particular are called upon to bring about improvements and better protect victims.”
Player consultant Backs sees a problem for society as a whole. “I think it’s an awkward mix of a lack of upbringing, a lack of education, frustration. So I don’t think anything will change in the foreseeable future. But I think it’s important to raise public awareness.”