Wilfried Zaha has responded to the racist abuse and death threats he received from supporters on social media after Crystal Palace’s draw with Arsenal at the weekend.
Zaha won a penalty against the Gunners at the weekend, with some saying he went to ground easily, whilst others insisted he was clearly fouled by Granit Xhaka. Regardless of your opinion on the incident, the way the Palace man has been treated since then has been pathetic.
You don’t need to go far to see the racist abuse and death threats against Zaha. It’s there in the replies to his Instagram posts if you’re willing to look. Clearly, the player himself has experienced it all first hand, as he posted a response on his Instagram story.
“For all the people taking it one step further and being racist and wishing death on my family, I wish your families the best too,” he wrote. “My life is still very good despite your hate.”
There’s never any reason to take your anger at a football match this far, but it seems to be more and more commonplace on social media nowadays. Shkodran Mustafi received death threats of his own from Arsenal fans earlier this week, even though he was offering condolences to Leicester City after the helicopter crash.
Back on the subject of the racial abuse directed at Zaha, i Newspaper managed to embarrass themselves reporting on it. In their article on the winger, they managed to use a picture of Aaron Wan-Bissaka by mistake.
The defender wasn’t mentioned at all in the piece, and the article specifically says “The Ivory Coast international (below)”, but the only picture below is the one of the 20-year-old.
This is an excerpt from today’s edition of the i Newspaper.
Yes, they really did use a picture of Wan-Bissaka thinking it was Zaha. In an article about racial abuse. I wish I was joking. pic.twitter.com/dLth6DJ8JM
— Dan Critchlow (@afcDW) October 31, 2018
Maybe you should make a concerted effort not to just use a picture of any old non-white player when writing about the racial abuse of one person in particular. Just a thought.