The FAI have offered their support to James McClean following threats made to him on social media recently.
The Stoke City and Republic of Ireland player has received verbal abuse at games and on social media since he started playing in the English leagues and has been quite public about the incidents.
His club Stoke City have come out to support their player and his family.
We stand with James McClean and his family.
There is ๐ก๐ข room for discrimination of ๐๐ก๐ฌ form.
โ Stoke City FC (@stokecity) February 16, 2021
Writing on Instagram this week, McClean said:
“Banging my head against a brick wall here but look i have been doing that anyways for a long time so one more wont make a difference”.
“Soo much coverage this past couple weeks about discrimination and the condemnation of it across media outlets, players, ex players etc which is great to see because its wrong and idiots should be held responsible for their actions and words as no body should be subjected to that”
Make no mistake about it or to take anything away from that but just to pose the question really, racism, gender, ethnic..the list of discrimination that goes on is unacceptable right, my question is here… does being abused for being irish and anti irish abuse acceptable ? Is it not popular enough to be seen to be knowledged or spoke out about too ?
I have highlighted the abuse publicly on social media recently and the silence from everyone is deafening!
If you are offended by me saying that then maybe that tells you something
โ we are not criminals, we are irishmen! This the crime we stand accused..โ โ๏ธ”
The Football Association of Ireland has come out today (Tuesday) to condemn the latest social media threats aimed at him and his family and have offered their full support to him.
In a statement they said:
“The Association has reached out to James in light of this most recent incident and assured him that the FAI will assist him in any way it can.
FAI CEO Jonathan Hill said: โThe FAI remains committed to safeguarding all of our players against any form of abuse on any social media platform. To abuse or threaten James or any player because of his nationality should not be tolerated by society. Unfortunately, such behaviour is all too common now on social media.
โOnly last week we commended the stance taken by English football against the abuse of footballers across all social media channels and we are examining how best we can take a similar stance.โ
Under the leadership of Intercultural Programme National Co-ordinator Des Tomlinson, the FAI is currently working on new Racism and Discrimination policies which will be presented to Board in the coming weeks.
โThe latest incident involving James and his family highlights how important this work is and why football needs to take action,โ commented Des Tomlinson. โIn recent times many of our players have been victims of social media abuse, hate speech and threats including Jonathan Afolabi, Cyrus Christie and James.
“It is not acceptable and I will assure James of our full support as he deals with this.โ
We are Irish ๐๐๐ฎ๐ช๐ฎ๐ช We are not criminals… pic.twitter.com/Wyk6gitrpi
— James McClean (@macajw) February 12, 2021